Original articlePediatric cardiacRisk Factors Associated With Readmission After Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgery
Section snippets
Material and Methods
After obtaining Internal Review Board approval, we performed a retrospective cohort study of 685 patients who underwent congenital heart surgery at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009 and were subsequently discharged. Readmission was defined as a repeat admission to Egleston occurring within 30 days discharge.
Population Summary Statistics
For the entire cohort, median age was 198 days (range 1 to 7,531) and median weight was 6.4 kg (range 1.7 to 102.1). There was a slight male predominance (57% vs 43%) and most of our patients were Caucasian (49%). The most common preoperative histories were the presence of a genetic anomaly (103, 15%) and gastroesophageal reflux disease (106, 15%) (Table 1).
When categorized by the risk-adjusted congenital heart surgery method, 80 patients (12%) were RACHS 1, 256 (37%) RACHS 2, 204 (30%) RACHS
Comment
Readmission to the hospital shortly after discharge appears to be a problem across all ages and all service lines. With proposals by insurance companies to deny coverage of the additional expenses incurred by the readmission, there is increasing attention being paid to these particular patients [2].
Many studies have examined readmission in children with asthma and other chronic medical conditions [3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. Unfortunately, there is very little information available regarding readmission
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