Trends in patient characteristics and mortality among Medicare patients diagnosed with peripheral artery disease.

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is a well-described risk factor for mortality, but few studies have examined secular trends in mortality over time for patients with PAD. We characterized trends in mortality in patients with PAD in recent years among Medicare patients. We used Medicare claims to identify patients with a new diagnosis code for PAD between January 1, 2006 and December 31, 2018 using International Classification of Diseases (ICD) diagnosis codes. The primary outcome of interest was the 1-year all-cause age-adjusted mortality rate. Our secondary outcome was the 5-year all-cause mortality rate. Multivariable regression was used to identify factors which predict mortality at 1 year. We identified 4,373,644 patients with a new diagnosis code for PAD during the study period. Between 2006 and 2018, 1-year all-cause age-adjusted mortality declined from 12.6% to 9.9% ( Among US Medicare patients diagnosed with PAD between 2006 and 2019, 1-year age-adjusted mortality declined by 2.7%. This decline in mortality among PAD patients occurred in the context of a younger mean age of diagnosis of PAD and improved cardiovascular prevention therapy.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of conflicting interestsThe authors declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Marc P Bonaca reports grant support to Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) from AstraZeneca, Amgen, Daiichi Sankyo, and Merck and grant support to Colorado Prevention Center Clinical Research from AstraZeneca, Amgen, and Sanofi. Mary M McDermott has received grant funding from Helixmith and research support from Helixmith, ChromaDex, Mars, Inc., ArtAssist, and Reserveage. The remaining authors have no conflicts of interest.