Abstract Body (Do not enter title and authors here): Introduction:
Data is accumulating regarding the contemporary trends of mortality rates in patients with alcohol-related cardiomyopathy across the United States.
Hypothesis:
We hypothesized that with increased awareness about the adverse effects of alcohol on the cardiovascular system and the advancement of echocardiography in the early diagnosis of alcoholic cardiomyopathy, mortality rates may show a downward trend.
Methods:
This is a retrospective observational study that retrieved death certificates from the CDC WONDER (Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Wide-ranging ONline Data for Epidemiological Research) database from 2001-2020. The mortality rate of alcohol-related cardiomyopathy using ICD code I42.6 (Alcoholic cardiomyopathy) was studied from 2001-2020. This study duration was further subdivided into five-year periods. We calculated the crude mortality rate and age-adjusted mortality rate per 100,000 for four U.S census regions (CR-1 Northeast, CR-2 Midwest, CR-3 South, CR-4 West).
Results:
The overall age-adjusted mortality rate remained at 0.1/100,000 deaths in four U.S census regions until 2015; however, in the last five years of the study period, AAMR(age-related mortality rate) increased from 0.1 to 0.2/100,000 deaths.



Conclusions:
The mortality trends associated with alcohol-related cardiomyopathy have not changed significantly over the past two decades. This can be explained by the larger number of people developing alcoholic cardiomyopathy due to the increase in global alcohol use in addition to the fact that more diagnosed patients are receiving earlier treatment with goal-directed medical therapy for cardiomyopathy. Limitations of this study include intrinsic weakness of the WONDER dataset (changes with ICD-9 to ICD-10 codes, and potentially miscoding) which needs further research.


Discussion:
This suggests that while mortality rates associated with alcohol-related cardiomyopathy remained relatively steady for most of the study period, there was a concerning uptick in the latter years. This could prompt further investigation into potential factors contributing to this increase, despite advancements in awareness and diagnostic techniques.