Trends in 30-Day and 90-Day Readmission Rates After Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation

Hospital readmissions are closely scrutinized and are associated with increased healthcare spending, poorer quality of life, and increased resource utilization. Thirty-day readmission rates are a quality metric examined by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and readmission reduction has been an important target of healthcare reform. 1 Zuckerman RB Sheingold SH Orav EJ Ruhter J Epstein AM. Readmissions, observation, and the hospital readmissions reduction program. N Engl J Med. 2016; 374: 1543-1551 Google Scholar However, it has been shown that readmission risk decreases slowly after hospital discharge, and hospitalized patients remain at elevated risk of readmission for several months after discharge. 2 Dharmarajan K Hsieh AF Kulkarni VT Lin Z Ross JS Horwitz LI Kim N Suter LG Lin H Normand SL Krumholz HM. Trajectories of risk after hospitalization for heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, or pneumonia: retrospective cohort study. BMJ. 2015; 350: h411 Google Scholar Although previous research has focused on 30-day readmission rates after transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), 3 Kolte D Khera S Sardar MR Gheewala N Gupta T Chatterjee S Goldsweig A Aronow WS Fonarow GC Bhatt DL Greenbaum AB Gordon PC Sharaf B Abbott JD. Thirty-day readmissions after transcatheter aortic valve replacement in the United States: insights from the Nationwide Readmissions Database. Circ Cardiovasc Interv. 2017; 10e004472 Google Scholar ,4 Khera S Kolte D Gupta T Goldsweig A Velagapudi P Kalra A Tang GHL Aronow WS Fonarow GC Bhatt DL Aronow HD Kleiman NS Reardon M Gordon PC Sharaf B Abbott JD. Association between hospital volume and 30-day readmissions following transcatheter aortic valve replacement. JAMA Cardiol. 2017; 2: 732-741 Google Scholar there are limited data on longer-term readmission rates. In this study, we sought to examine the temporal trends in 30-day and 90-day readmission in patients who underwent TAVI.