Identification of demographics and comorbidities associated with Vascular Hamartomas

Abstract

Vascular hamartomas (VH) are tumor like growths that typically appear in infants and manifest as a blemish on the skin. The goal of this study is to substantiate clinical data on the demographic characteristics and discover comorbid conditions associated with VH. Previous clinical data suggests that VH are associated with preterm birth. This study will be using two data sources: the nationally representative National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS) and Cerner Health Facts (HF). NHDS contained 2,944,459 patient discharges with a weighted total of 386,186,183 and HF contained 46,721,119 unique patient IDs. Survey regressions were run for the NHDS data on vascular hamartoma patients and a series of 55 ICD 9 CM codes with a frequency of 5 or higher in vascular hamartoma patients in the NHDS. Logistic regressions were run on the HF dataset for vascular hamartoma patients and the same set of 55 ICD-9 CM codes. Race, sex, region, and age were evaluated as predictors. The results show age as a significant negative predictor. Blacks and Asian/Pacific Islanders were significantly less likely to have VH than whites. Female subjects were more likely to have VH than males and patients in the Northeast, Midwest, and West were significantly less likely to have VH than patients in the South. There were 13 significant comorbidities in the NHDS and 35 significant in HF. In both datasets 11 ICD-9 CM codes were found to be significantly associated with the diagnosis of VH. The demographics found in this analysis reflect previous clinical data and offer a population wide view of VH. The comorbidities show that VH may be associated with over development of the fetus.