Trend of Obesity in The United States During a Decade

Background: and objective While obesity prevalence in the United States has increased considerably, its impact on factors such as mortality, comorbidity, and cost have not been extensively analyzed in hospitalized patients. Detailed information on the prevalence of obesity and associated factors among inpatients may help in developing health care policies aimed at reducing mortality, comorbidity, and cost. Methods: In this study, data for analysis of inpatient discharges from 2005 to 2015 were obtained from the Health Cost and Utilization Project Nationwide Inpatient Sample (HCUP-NIS) database. Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or greater is defined as obesity. Descriptive analysis includes trends of obesity by sex, race, region, location and payer. To classify magnitude of association between obesity and comorbidities, we classified prevalence ratio (PR) to high risk factor (PR≥1.5), low risk factor (PR= <1.5-1.25), null (0.8) and preventive factor (PR<0.8) based on expert epidemiologists opinion. Results: During the study period we reviewed 82,618,702 discharges with 6,705,774 obesity for a rate of 8.11%. The percent of obese discharges increased from 4.6% in 2005 to 11.9% in 2015. In all subgroup variables, there was a substantial difference between obesity and non-obesity in hospital patients. Data indicated females had a higher prevalence of hospital discharges with obesity, compared to males. Moreover, Black race had the highest percentage and Asian or Pacific Islander is the lowest in this trend. Conclusion: While obesity prevalence in the United States population has slowly increased, there has been a more marked increase in obese patients in the hospital.