Sleep Deprivation Is Associated With Increased Risk for Hypertensive Heart Disease: A Nationwide Population-Based Cohort Study

Background: Literature documenting the in-hospital cardiovascular outcomes of sleep deprivation (SD) patients is scarce. We aimed to compare inpatient cardiovascular outcomes in patients with sleep deprivation and those without sleep deprivation.

Method: We queried the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) database from 2016 to 2019 to conduct a retrospective observational study. Using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) codes, we identified patients with sleep deprivation (SD) diagnosis and compared them to their counterparts without sleep deprivation (NSD). The cardiovascular outcomes of interest were hypertensive heart disease (HHD), atrial fibrillation (AF), and ST-segment and non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI and NSTEMI, respectively). We used multivariable regression analysis to unearth the relationship between sleep deprivation and cardiovascular disease.

Results: There were 28,484,087 patients admitted during the study period, among which 2.1% (6,08,059) with a mean age of 59 (sd=19) years had a sleep deprivation diagnosis unrelated to medical or psychiatric illness. Of these, 75.7% were Caucasians, 11.5% were Blacks, and 8% were Hispanics. Individuals with sleep deprivation had a higher odds ratio (OR) of HHD, i.e., OR=1.3 (1.29-1.31), p<0.0001. The odds of heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) was 0.9 (0.9-1.92), p=0.45; heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) was 0.98 (0.97-1.01), p=0.31; and the odds of the SD population for AF was 0.9 (0.89-1.03), p=0.11.

Conclusion: Sleep deprivation seems to be more prevalent in the Caucasian population. Individuals with sleep deprivation have a higher risk of hypertensive heart disease but similar outcomes to the general population in terms of AF, HFrEF, and HFpEF.