Table 1.

Characteristics of Patients Discharged with Acute Lower Intestinal Bleeding in the 2002 Nationwide Inpatient Sample^a

Characteristic	Weighted Number	Weighted %	Unadjusted In-hospital Mortality (%)
Total number of subjects	227,022	100	3.9
Age
< 50 yrs	32,230	14.2	0.7
50–70 yrs	60,369	26.6	3.6
> 70 yrs	134,423	59.2	4.7
Female gender	127,626	56.2	3.4
Race/ethnicity
White	124,864	55.0	4.0
Black	23,397	10.3	5.0
Hispanic	11,274	5.0	2.6
Asian	3,666	1.6	4.2
Other	3,191	1.4	2.5
Missing race	60,602	26.7	3.5
Primary payment source
Medicare	153,769	67.7	4.3
Private	51,236	22.6	2.8
Medicaid	12,182	5.4	2.7
Other	9,713	4.3	3.4
Comorbidity scoreb
0	93,388	41.1	1.7
1–2	58,586	25.8	3.1
≥ 2	75,049	33.1	7.1
Transfusion of packed red blood cells	47,501	20.9	6.1

^aAll numbers and percentages are weighted to provide nationwide estimates.

^bDeyo adaptation of the Charlson Comorbidity Score for use with administrative data ¹⁶.