Introduction: Abdominal pain is a common gastrointestinal disorder and accounts for substantial number of outpatient visits. There is limited data on the inpatient burden of abdominal pain in the United States. The aim of this study was to evaluate inpatient admission rates, length of stay, and associated costs related to abdominal pain. Methods: Using data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample we examined the characteristics of hospitalization for abdominal pain (ICD-9 code 789) and evaluated the time trends of resource utilization from 1997 to 2012. Fisher's exact test and two-sample t-test were used where appropriate. Results: In 2012, abdominal pain was the primary discharge diagnosis for 45,840 hospitalizations. Majority of these patients were females (63.95%) and aged between 18 and 64 (64.71%). The mean charges per hospitalization were $21,302 and resulted in a national bill of $978,260,696. The mean cost was $6058 and the aggregate cost was $278,123,672. Based on regions defined by bureau of census, southern states accounted for majority (42.67%) of these hospitalizations. Only 9.62% patients were uninsured and median income for zip code was not low (>25 percentile) for majority of the hospitalizations (63.31%). Mean charges were significantly higher for zip codes with median income greater than 25 percentile when compared to low (≤25 percentile) median income zip codes (21,961 vs 19,921, p= 0.027). Readmission rate with abdominal pain as the primary diagnosis was 2.2%. Whereas, all cause readmission rate was 17%. Between 1997 and 2010, the number of hospitalizations for patients with a primary discharge diagnosis of abdominal pain increased from 21,190 patients to 48,450 (p < .001; relative risk 1.19, 95% CI: 1.18, 1.21). Despite, no change in mean duration (2.9 days) of hospital stay the mean charges increased from $5,671 to $21,302, p < 0.001 and the aggregate charges increased 4.92 folds from $198,728,026 to $978,260,696. Conclusion: Abdominal pain is a common reason for hospitalization. There are gender and regional differences with females and southern states accounting for majority of admissions. Patient's socioeconomic status affects the charges of hospitalization as suggested by lower charges for hospitalization in low median income zip codes. The number of inpatient discharges and associated cost has increased since 1997 to 2012. Additionally, readmission rate in patients presenting with abdominal pain is high and adds to the economic burden.Figure 1