Emergency department use and hospital admissions among adult orthotopic heart transplant patients

OBJECTIVE: To study the demographics, clinical presentations, and outcomes of emergency department (ED) visits of patients with heart transplantation (HT) in the United States. METHODS: We performed a secondary analysis of the National Emergency Department Sample database from 2016 to 2018. All ED visits of patients with HT aged ≥ 18 years were identified using International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision codes. RESULTS: Out of a total 308,182,495 national ED visits, 55,583 were HT‐related visits. The median age was 61.07 years (interquartile range [IQR]: 46.91–69.38) and 69.44% were males. The hospital admission rate was 54.3% and median inpatient length of stay was 3.19 days (IQR: 1.63–5.92). The mortality rate during inpatient stay was 1.16%. Median inpatient and ED charges among admitted patients were $37,911 (IQR: $21,487–$71,262). The most common primary diagnosis of HT‐related ED visits was sepsis (4.3%) followed by acute kidney injury (3.57%) and chest pain (3%). CONCLUSION: More than half of total ED visits among HT patients resulted in hospital admission. The most common cause for ED visit in these patients was sepsis followed by acute kidney injury and chest pain.