Socioeconomic determinants of peripheral artery disease hospitalisations in the community

Abstract Lower socioeconomic status is consistently linked to a higher cardiovascular risk. While several analyses have established the association between socioeconomic determinants and coronary artery disease, the evidence for peripheral artery disease (PAD) is less extensive. Therefore we sought to analyse the association between community-level socioeconomic determinants of health and PAD hospitalisations in Slovenia. We assessed the association between hospitalisation rates for PAD and community-level determinants, namely proportion of population 80 years of age, male-to-female population ratio, proportion with at least high school, medan and mean income, access to bicycling lanes, proportion of population with diabetes and hypertension, incidence rate of myocardial infarction and alcohol-related disease, and cardiovascular mortality rate) using linear regression modelling. Between 2015 and 2022, 15,987 patients were hospitalised for PAD (96 per 100,000 population per year). Median income in community was the strongest predictor of PAD hospitalisations: every 1000 EUR increase in median income was associated with a -7.1 decrease in hospitalisations per 100.000 population (95%CI: -9.4 to -4-8), which remained significant after adjustment for other community-level variables (-6.2 per 100.000, p0.001). Median community income is strongly associated with PAD hospitalisation rates and therefore represents a major socioeconomic determinant for PAD burden in the community.For image description, please refer to the figure legend and surrounding text.