A Comparison of Clinical Characteristics and Outcomes Between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Patients Presenting to Townsville Hospital Emergency Department With Chest Pain

• Published in: Heart, lung & circulation lung & circulation, 2022-02, Vol.31 (2), p.183-193
• Main Authors: Win, Kyi T.H., Thomas, Benjamin, Emeto, Theophilus I., Fairley, Lachlan, Thavarajah, Harshithaa, Vangaveti, Venkat N., Danda, Nita, Wai, Htet N., New, Ru H., Muñoz, Miguel A., Basu, Sonali, Yadav, Raibhan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Australia; Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples; Cardiovascular risk factors; Chest pain; Chest Pain - diagnosis; Chest Pain - epidemiology; Chest Pain - etiology; Closing the gap; Coronary Artery Disease; Emergency Service, Hospital; Hospitals; Humans; Indigenous; Ischaemic heart disease; Middle Aged; Retrospective Studies
• ISSN: 1443-9506; 1444-2892; 1444-2892
• DOI: 10.1016/j.hlc.2021.06.450

Indigenous Australians have a high rate of ischaemic heart disease (IHD). There is a paucity of local data for North Queensland regarding the clinical characteristics of Indigenous people who present to the emergency department (ED) with chest pain. The aim of the study is to compare the cardiovascular risk factors, social characteristics, and the clinical outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous patients who presented with cardiac-related chest pain. This is a retrospective single-centre audit. The data was collected through chart reviews of chest pain presentations to the Townsville University Hospital Emergency Department, Queensland, Australia, from January to December 2017. We categorised the patients into Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups and compared their cardiac risk factors and social characteristics. We further classified the patients into three diagnosis groups and we measured the clinical outcomes in the patients with a diagnosis of cardiac-related chest pain. We used a data linkage to the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages for the death outcomes. A multivariable analysis was done to determine the risk of major adverse cardiac event (MACE) for Indigenous vs non-Indigenous patients. Indigenous patients were over-represented making up 19.1% of the total cohort (compared with 11.1% of the North Queensland Indigenous population) and presented at a younger age (median age: 45 vs 52, p