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Shorter hospital length of stay after PE related to post-discharge mortality
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Patients hospitalized for pulmonary embolism whose length of stay was short demonstrated a greater post-discharge mortality, compared with those patients who had an average length of stay, according to study results in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
To determine the effect patient and hospital factors have on length of hospital stay, researchers from Switzerland and the United States assessed 15,531 patients with pulmonary embolism discharged from 186 acute care hospitals in Pennsylvania between January 2000 and November 2002.
Median length of stay for patients with pulmonary embolism was six days and post-discharge mortality rate was 3.3%. Compared with those who had a five- to six-day length of stay, those who stayed four days or less had a higher adjusted post-discharge mortality (OR, 1.55; 95% CI, 1.21-2.00).
Patients with severe illness and those without private health insurance had lesser odds of being discharged. Black patients and those from Philadelphia were less likely to be discharged on a given day (OR, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.82-0.94 and OR, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.73-0.93), according to the researchers. – by Stacey L. Adams
Arch Intern Med. 2008;168:706-712.