The Prevalence and Risk Factors of Hypokalemia in Pregnancy-Related Hospitalizations: A Nationwide Population Study

Table 1

Baseline patient and hospital characteristics of pregnancy-related admissions for women with and without hypokalemia.

Demographics	Without hypokalemia	With hypokalemia
No. of patients	12,346,239	85,670
Age ± SD (y)	28.1 ± 6.0	27.0 ± 6.2	<0.001
Age group, y (%)			<0.001
1–17	2.1	3.2
18–39	94.9	93.9
≥40	3.0	2.9
Race (%)			<0.001
White	52.9	43.1
Black	15.2	31.9
Hispanic	20.8	17.4
Asian or Pacific Islander	5.4	2.6
Native American	0.8	1.0
Other	4.9	4.0
Median household income in the patient’s zip code (%)			<0.001
First quartile	28.6	40.2
Second quartile	25.5	26.9
Third quartile	24.5	20.3
Fourth quartile	21.5	12.6
Hospital bed size (%)			0.0854
Small	13.5	12.7
Medium	29.4	28.9
Large	57.1	58.4
Primary payer (%)			<0.001
Government insured	46.5	62.4
Private	50.7	31.9
Self-pay	2.9	5.7
Teaching hospital (%)	55.8	59.5	<0.001
Charlson Comorbidity Index score (%)			<0.001
0	94.2	80.7
≥1	5.8	19.3

All p values were two sided, with 0.05 as the threshold for statistical significance.