The Economic Burden of Hyponatremia: Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis

Abstract Background Hyponatremia is the most common electrolyte abnormality observed in clinical practice. Several studies have demonstrated that hyponatremia is associated with an increased length of hospital stay and of hospital resource utilization. To clarify the impact of hyponatremia on the length of hospitalization and costs, we performed a meta-analysis based on published studies that compared hospital length of stay and cost between patients with or without hyponatremia. Methods An extensive Medline, Embase and Cochrane search was performed to retrieve all studies published up to April 1st 2015, using the following words: "hyponatremia" or “hyponatraemia” AND "hospitalization" or “hospitalization”. A meta-analysis was performed including all studies comparing duration of hospitalization and hospital readmission rate in subjects with and without hyponatremia. Results Out of 444 retrieved articles, 46 studies satisfied the inclusion criteria encompassing a total of 3,940,042 patients; among these 757,763 (19·2%) were hyponatremic. Across all studies hyponatremia was associated with a significantly longer duration of hospitalization (3·30[2·90;3·71] mean days; p