Differences in treatment and management of indigenous and non-indigenous patients presenting with chest pain: results of the Heart Protection Partnership (HPP) study.

BACKGROUND: Indigenous patients with acute coronary syndromes represent a high-risk group. There are however few contemporary datasets addressing differences in the presentation and management of Indigenous and non-Indigenous patients with chest pain.
METHODS: The Heart Protection Project, is a multicentre retrospective audit of consecutive medical records from patients presenting with chest pain. Patients were identified as Indigenous or non-Indigenous, and time to presentation and cardiac investigations as well as rates of cardiac investigations and procedures were compared between the two groups.
RESULTS: Of the 2380 patients included, 199 (8.4%) identified as Indigenous, and 2174 (91.6%) as non-Indigenous. Indigenous patients were younger, had higher rates hyperlipidaemia, diabetes, smoking, known coronary artery disease and a lower rate of prior PCI; and were significantly less likely to have private health insurance, be admitted to an interventional facility or to have a cardiologist as primary physician. Following adjustment for difference in baseline characteristics, Indigenous patients had comparable rates of cardiac investigations and delay times to presentation and investigations.
CONCLUSIONS: Although the Indigenous population was identified as a high-risk group, in this analysis of selected Australian hospitals there were no significant differences in treatment or management of Indigenous patients in comparison to non-Indigenous.