Background
Hospital readmissions are a quality indicator in bariatric surgery. In recent years,
duration of stay after bariatric surgery has trended down greatly. We hypothesized
that a shorter postoperative hospitalization does not increase the likelihood of readmission.
Methods
The University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) is an alliance of academic medical centers
and affiliated hospitals. The UHC's clinical database contains information on inpatient
stay and returns (readmissions) up to 30 days after discharge. A multicenter analysis
of outcomes was performed by the use of data from the January 2009 to December 2013
for patients 18 years and older. Patients were identified by bariatric procedure International
Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, codes and restricted by diagnosis codes
for morbid obesity.
Results
A total of 95,294 patients met inclusion criteria. The mean patient age was 45.4 (±0.11)
years, and 73,941 (77.6%) subjects were female. There were 5,423 (5.7%) readmissions
within the study period. Patients with hospitalizations of 3 days and more than 3 days
were twice and four times as likely to be readmitted than those with hospitalizations
of one day, respectively (P < .001).
Conclusion
Patients with longer postoperative hospitalizations were more likely to be readmitted
after bariatric surgery. Early discharge does not appear to be associated with increased
readmission rates.
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: May 29, 2015
Accepted:
March 5,
2015
Footnotes
Funding provided by Department of Surgery, Division of General Surgery, Medical College of Wisconsin. Authors supported, in part, by the National Center for Advancing Translational, Sciences, National Institutes of Health, through Grant Number 8UL1TR000055.
Alex Lois, Matthew Frelich, Natasha Sahr, and Dr Wang have no conflicts of interest. Dr Hohmann is principal consultant for the University HealthSystem Consortium. Dr Gould is a consultant for Torax Medical.
Identification
Copyright
© 2015 Elsevier Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
