JAMA surgery
-
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have implemented penalties for hospitals with above-average readmission rates under the Hospital Readmissions Reductions Program. These changes will likely be extended to affect postoperative readmissions in the future. ⋯ Development of an online calculator using this predictive model will allow us to identify patients who are at high risk for readmission at the time of discharge. Patients with increased risk may benefit from more intensive postoperative follow-up in the outpatient setting.
-
Venous thromboembolism (VTE) surveillance practices in hospitals, but not adherence to Surgical Care Improvement Program VTE prophylaxis measures, have been reported to explain the variation in VTE rates in hospitals. ⋯ Hospitals with higher VTE surveillance rates have higher inpatient VTE rates but not decreased postdischarge VTE rates. However, hospitals with higher inpatient VTE rates have higher postdischarge VTE rates, which suggests that surveillance may be influenced by higher observed rates and not surveillance practices alone.
-
Maintaining perioperative normothermia has been shown to decrease the rate of surgical site infection (SSI) after segmental colectomy and is part of the World Health Organization's Guidelines for Safe Surgery. However, strong evidence supporting this association is lacking, and an exact definition of normothermia has not been described. ⋯ Patients who underwent segmental colectomy and sustained a period of intraoperative hypothermia were no more likely to develop an SSI than those who were normothermic.
-
Superior outcomes have been established with the use of an arteriovenous fistula (AVF) at first hemodialysis. However, considering the influence of comorbidities, medical insurance, and specialist care, racial/ethnic differences in the patterns of utilization of AVFs are unknown and deserve evaluation. ⋯ Black patients and Hispanic patients tend to initiate hemodialysis with an AVF less frequently than white patients despite being younger and having fewer comorbidities. These disparities persisted independent of factors that drive health access for fistula placement, such as medical insurance status and nephrology care. The sociocultural underpinnings of these disparities deserve investigation and redress to maximize the benefits of initiating hemodialysis via fistula in patients with end-stage renal disease irrespective of race/ethnicity.