Socially Excluded Persons in Ireland Have an Increased Annual Risk of Hospitalisation Due to Venous Thromboembolic Disease

Introduction

Social exclusion in Ireland is strongly associated with injecting drug use, particularly injection of opiates into the groin: a strong risk factor for venous thromboembolism (VTE) (O'Reilly et al, 2015).

Ní Cheallaigh et al (2017) reported a high burden of disease in socially excluded individuals in Ireland that can be effectively addressed by dedicated service planning and care provision.

VTE in socially excluded persons has been identified by our group as a key knowledge gap. We have generated preliminary data demonstrating that socially excluded people account for a significant proportion of patients presenting with VTE in Dublin.

Methods

We extracted national Hospital InPatient Enquiry (HIPE) data from Health Atlas Ireland using the methods outlined in Kevane et al (2019). We identified individuals as "socially excluded persons" if their records contained one or more of the variables identified by Aldridge et al (2018): homeless individuals, prisoners, sex workers and individuals with substance use disorders. We identified all emergency inpatient hospital admissions for those with any diagnosis of VTE during 2017 using VTE-associated ICD-10 codes.

Results

There were 494,972 emergency inpatient admissions in patients >16 years during this 12 month period, of which 5,717 (1.2%) had a VTE diagnosis (55% of which were DVTs).

306 (5.3%) of hospital episodes with VTE occurred in socially excluded individuals. Applying maximum and minimum assumptions on the estimated population denominator we estimated that overall the annual incidence rate of VTE-related hospitalisation per person was approximately 10-fold higher in socially excluded individuals when compared to the general population (in which it was 0.12%).

Conclusions

This is the first time that an approximately ten-fold increase in the risk of hospitalisation due to VTE has been shown to be associated with social exclusion. This information was generated from national data, using surrogate identifiers for socially excluded persons.

We hypothesise that detailed characterisation of VTE events in socially excluded clients will permit improved service planning and care provision for these vulnerable patients, enabling better VTE prevention and management. This may save lives and prevent the disabling and common long-term consequence of post-thrombotic syndrome with debilitating leg ulcers, which in this population results in numerous admissions and severe mobility issues.

Planning such initiatives has the potential to reduce morbidity and mortality, improve quality of life but also to reduce hospital admissions (which are hugely over-represented in this patient group), save costs and resources and most importantly results in more equitable health care for socially excluded patients.