• Salvatore T Scali, Kristina A Giles, Paul Kubilis, Adam W Beck, Cristina J Crippen, Steven J Hughes, Thomas S Huber, Gilbert R Upchurch, and David H Stone.
• Division of Vascular Surgery and Endovascular Therapy, University of Florida, Gainesville, Fla. Electronic address: salvatore.scali@surgery.ufl.edu.
• J. Vasc. Surg. 2020 Apr 1; 71 (4): 1135-1146.e4.

ObjectiveFailure to rescue (FTR), a patient safety indicator (PSI) defined, codified, and adjudicated by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, is classified as a preventable inpatient death following major complications. FTR has been reported to be a significant driver of postoperative mortality after open abdominal aortic aneurysm (OAAA) repair. The association between hospital volume (HV) and mortality is well known; however, the mechanisms responsible for these improved outcomes and relative contribution to observed interhospital variation is poorly understood. Similarly, HV influence on specific complications predictive of FTR is unknown; therefore, we sought to determine how HV influences risk and contributes to interhospital variation in PSI events leading to FTR and/or in-hospital mortality after OAAA repair.MethodsThe Vizient database (174 academic/nonacademic hospitals) was queried for all OAAA repairs (elective, n = 2827; nonelective, n = 1622) completed from 2012 to 2014. The primary endpoint was combined FTR and/or in-hospital 30-day mortality. Risk-adjusted rates of complications, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality-designated PSIs, and FTR were determined. Additional modeling identified PSIs associated with FTR, whereas HV effects on PSIs and FTR were evaluated using mixed-effect models accounting for interhospital variation. Proportion of variation attributable to HV was estimated by contrasting hospital random effect variances in the presence/absence of volume effects.ResultsThe combined overall FTR/in-hospital 30-day mortality rate was 9.3% (n = 414). For elective and nonelective cases, the overall FTR and 30-day mortality rates were: FTR, 1.6%, 4.9%; and 30-day in-hospital mortality, 3.4%, 17.5%, respectively. HV significantly influenced FTR/30-day in-hospital mortality (P < .0001). FTR/30-day mortality odds for hospitals with 3-year volumes of 50, 100, 150, and 200 cases were 1.4, 2.0, 2.7, and 3.0 times lower, respectively, than hospitals performing ≤25 cases/3 years. The proportion of interhospital variation attributed to HV was greatest for FTR/30-day mortality (62%). Procedural volume accounted for 41% and 38% of interhospital variation in postoperative bleeding and myocardial infarction, respectively. Preoperative predictors of FTR included coagulopathy, arrhythmia (nonelective cases); congestive heart failure, obesity (elective cases); and age, neurological disease, hypertension, and valvular disease (all cases).ConclusionsOAAA FTR/30-day in-hospital mortality strongly correlated with annual case volume with higher volume centers having the lowest risk. Notably, HV accounted for a significant proportion of the observed variation in FTR and specific complications providing direct evidence for how the volume-outcome relationship may influence perioperative mortality. These findings can inform stakeholders to strategically enable them to implement processes of care directed at the most vulnerable patients that are designed to reduce the likelihood of preventable adverse events and death after OAAA repair. Furthermore, these results underscore the need to regionalize OAAA repair and potentially other complex operations, to HV centers because of their improved ability to rescue patients experiencing complications associated with postoperative mortality.Copyright © 2019 Society for Vascular Surgery. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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