It remains unclear if there remain racial/ethnic differences in the management and in-hospital outcomes of acute myocardial infarction-cardiogenic shock (AMI-CS) in contemporary practice.

We used the National inpatient Sample (2012–2017) to identify a cohort of adult AMI-CS hospitalizations. Race was classified as White, Black and Others (Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, Native Americans). Primary outcome of interest was in-hospital mortality, and secondary outcomes included use of invasive cardiac procedures, length of hospital stay and discharge disposition.

Among 203,905 AMI-CS admissions, 70.4% were White, 8.1% were Black and 15.7% belonged to Other races. Black AMI-CS admissions were more often female, with lower socio-economic status, greater comorbidity, and higher rates of non-ST-segment-elevation AMI-CS, cardiac arrest, and multi-organ failure. Compared to White AMI-CS admissions, Black and Other races had lower rates of coronary angiography (75.3% vs 69.3% vs 73.6%), percutaneous coronary intervention (52.7% vs 48.6% vs 54.8%), and mechanical circulatory devices (48.3% vs 42.8% vs 43.7%) (all p < 0.001). Unadjusted in-hospital mortality was comparable between White (33.3%) and Black (33.8%) admissions, but lower for other races (32.1%). Adjusted analysis with White race as the reference identified lower in-hospital mortality for Black (odds ratio [OR] 0.85 [95% confidence interval {CI} 0.82–0.88]; p < 0.001) and Other races (OR 0.97 [95% CI 0.94–1.00]; p = 0.02). Admissions of Black race had longer hospital stay, and less frequent discharges to home.

Contrary to previous studies, we identified Black and Other race AMI-CS admissions had lower in-hospital mortality despite lower rates of cardiac procedures when compared to White admissions.