Impact of surgical volume on nationwide hospital mortality after pancreaticoduodenectomy.

AIM: To evaluate the impact of surgical volume on nationwide hospital mortality after pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) for periampullary tumors in South Korea.

METHODS

Periampullary cancer patients who underwent PD between 2005 and 2008 were analyzed from the database of the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service of South Korea. A total of 126 hospitals were divided into 5 categories, each similar in terms of surgical volume for each category. We used hospital mortality as a quality indicator, which was defined as death during the hospital stay for PD, and calculated adjusted mortality through multivariate logistic models using several confounder variables.

RESULTS

A total of eligible 4975 patients were enrolled in this study. Average annual surgical volume of hospitals was markedly varied, ranging from 215 PDs in the very-high-volume hospital to < 10 PDs in the very-low-volume hospitals. Admission route, type of medical security, and type of operation were significantly different by surgical volume. The overall hospital mortality was 2.1% and the observed hospital mortality by surgical volume showed statistical difference. Surgical volume, age, and type of operation were independent risk factors for hospital death, and adjusted hospital mortality showed a similar difference between hospitals with observed mortality. The result of the Hosmer-Lemeshow test was 5.76 (P = 0.674), indicating an acceptable appropriateness of our regression model.

CONCLUSION

The higher-volume hospitals showed lower hospital mortality than the lower-volume hospitals after PD in South Korea, which were clarified through the nationwide database.