Tool helps surgeons preoperatively determine readmission after spine fusion
By Admin | October 23, 2018
Results of a preoperative score — the readmission after posterior spine fusion or RAPSF score — can help predict which patients are likely to require readmission after elective one- and two-level posterior lumbar fusion. Furthermore, it may help during joint decision-making to assess whether a patient is indicated for surgery or requires presurgical optimization, a presenter said.
The validated score gives more points, which indicate a greater likelihood of a 30-day readmission, to a patient for older age and hemiplegia or paraplegia, for example, Deeptee Jain, MD, of University of California, San Francisco, said at the North American Spine Society Annual Meeting. A patient older than 90 years receives 8 points on the RAPSF score vs. 6 points for age between 70 and 79 years and 4 points for age between 60 and 69 years, according to the abstract.
Jain said she and her colleagues decided to study readmissions as an indicator of spine surgery quality because “readmissions have become an important component of quality of care.”
Researchers used inpatient databases from five states to identify patients for the case-control study that involved developing the score and validating it using 92,262 patients in a derivation cohort and 90,257 patients in a validation cohort who had 30-day readmission rates, respectively, of 10.9% and 11.1%.
For more information, please read, Tool helps surgeons preoperatively determine readmission after spine fusion by Healio.
