Race, Ethnicity, and Other Sociodemographic Characteristics of Patients with Hospital Admission for Migraine in the United States

AbstractBackground: Despite the growing awareness across the general population, migraine is often underdiagnosed and undertreated in socially and economically marginalized groups. The present study aimed to investigate the differential effects of race and income on other sociodemographic data and hospital length of stay in patients admitted to hospital with a primary diagnosis of migraine headache. Methods: We utilized the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) database to identify patients admitted from 2004 to 2017 with a primary diagnosis of migraine. Information on demographic and length of stay data was obtained. Only patients older than 18 years were selected and age outliers were excluded. Race groups were identified as “Caucasian”, “African American”, “Hispanic”, “Asian or Pacific Islander”, “Native American”, or “Others”. Income was identified as the estimated median household income of residents in the patient's ZIP Code. Results: A total of 106,761,737 valid cases were identified. After applying our case inclusion criteria, only 61453 (median age = 42 years, range = 18-78 years) were included. Patients identified as “African American”, “Hispanic” or “Native American” were more likely to have lower household income (p< 0.001), whereas higher income was found for the patients identified as “Caucasian”, even when men and women were considered separately (p< 0.001). No effects of race and/or household income was found on the length of stay in hospital. Implications: The occurrence of migraine diagnosis on hospital admission in the USA can be impacted by culturally driven patient-clinician communication differences between ethnic groups.