News Roundup: New and Noteworthy Information

Among patients with acute ischemic stroke, blacks have a lower mortality than whites, which may be attributable to differences in receiving life-sustaining interventions and end-of-life care, researchers reported in the February 1 Annals of Internal Medicine. The findings are based on 5,319 black and 18,340 white patients 18 and older who were hospitalized with acute ischemic stroke. The overall in-hospital mortality rate was lower for black patients than for white patients (5.0% vs 7.4%), as was all-cause mortality at 30 days (6.1% vs 11.4%) and one year (16.5% vs 24.4%). After propensity score adjustment, black race was independently associated with lower in-hospital mortality (odds ratio [OR], 0.77) and all-cause mortality up to one year (OR, 0.86). “After adjustment for the probability of dying in the hospital, black patients with stroke were more likely to receive life-sustaining interventions (OR, 1.22) but less likely to be discharged to hospice (OR, 0.25),” the researchers concluded.