Volume-Outcome Relation for Acute Appendicitis: Evidence from a Nationwide Population-Based Study

Po-Li Wei, Shih-Ping Liu, Joseph J Keller and Herng-Ching Lin

PLOS ONE, 2012, vol. 7, issue 12, 1-5

Abstract: Background: Although procedures like appendectomy have been studied extensively, the relative importance of each surgeon's surgical volume-to-ruptured appendicitis has not been explored. The purpose of this study was to investigate the rate of ruptured appendicitis by surgeon-volume groups as a measure of quality of care for appendicitis by using a nationwide population-based dataset. Methods: We identified 65,339 first-time hospitalizations with a discharge diagnosis of acute appendicitis (International Classification of Disease, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) codes 540, 540.0, 540.1 and 540.9) between January 2007 and December 2009. We used “whether or not a patient had a perforated appendicitis” as the outcome measure. A conditional (fixed-effect) logistic regression model was performed to explore the odds of perforated appendicitis among surgeon case volume groups. Results: Patients treated by low-volume surgeons had significantly higher morbidity rates than those treated by high-volume (28.1% vs. 26.15, p

Date: 2012
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0052539

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0052539

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