Ethnic Disparities in First Primary Intracerebral Hemorrhage in Northern Israel

BACKGROUND: Ethnic differences among first primary intracerebral hemorrhage (PICH) patients in an Israeli biethnic population have not yet been studied. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We included in the study 546 patients (counting warfarin-related hemorrhages) hospitalized during the period from December 1999 through June 2008. RESULTS: The mean age was 71.1 +/- 14 years for the Jewish patients and 63.3 +/- 13.9 years for the Arab patients (p < 0.0001). Diabetes and smoking were significantly more frequent among the Arab patients. No difference was found between groups by location, extent, or ventricular involvement of PICH. Although the in-hospital mortality rate was significantly higher among the Jewish patients, adjustment of the model combining multiple risk factors for PICH eliminated this difference. CONCLUSIONS: There are differences in the demographic and vascular risk factor profiles between Arab and Jewish PICH patients, with the Arabs found to be younger and to suffer more from diabetes. The location and extent of intracerebral hemorrhage as well as functional outcome were similar between the two groups. The apparent higher in-hospital mortality in the group of Jewish patients was eliminated when the influence of multiple covariates other than ethnicity, main vascular risk factors and international normalized ratio level were taken into consideration.