Med Care

Abstract Background: As physicians are pressured to deliver an increasing number of preventive services, follow guidelines, engage in evidence-based practice, and deliver patient-centered care in managerially driven organizations, they struggle with how much control they have over their time

Lifeline registry of endovascular aneurysm repair: Open repair surgical controls in clinical trials

Purpose: The improvement of available endovascular aortic aneurysm repair (EVAR) devices is critical for the advancement of patient care in vascular surgery. The goal of this article is to report a highly detailed, closely monitored, audited, pooled multicenter cohort of open surgical abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) repairs that has potential for use in future EVAR studies as a control data set. Methods: Open surgical AAA repair data from four investigational device exemption clinical aortic endograft trials were tested for poolability, merged, and analyzed for the intervals of 0 to 30 days and 31 to 365 days. Results: The data set includes 323 open patients (83% men; mean age, 70 years). Operative mortality at 30 days was 2.8%. The mean age of women was 3 years older than men, and mortality at 30 days for women was 5.7% compared with 2.2% for men (P = .18). Operative mortality for patients with large AAAs (≥5.5 cm, 3.6%) was not different than for patients with small aneurysms (\u3c5.5 cm, 2.4%, P = .54). All-cause mortality at 1 year was 6.7%, with significant predictors including age, sex, and renal failure. Women had 2.6-fold greater 1-year all-cause mortality rate (13.2%) than men (5.4%, P = .04), but statistical significance was lost after correction for age. Two additional AAA-related deaths occurred between days 31 and 365, resulting in a 1-year AAA-related mortality of 3.5%. Conclusion: This data set provides a tightly controlled, thoroughly detailed, and audited experience that has the potential to serve as an open control group for future EVAR trials. © 2008 The Society for Vascular Surgery

Society of Vascular Surgery Vascular Registry® comparison of carotid artery stenting outcomes for atherosclerotic vs nonatherosclerotic carotid artery disease

Objective: The Vascular Registry (VR) on carotid procedures collects long-term outcomes on carotid artery stenting (CAS) and carotid endarterectomy (CEA) patients. The purpose of this report is to describe in-hospital and 30-day CAS outcomes in patients with atherosclerotic carotid artery disease (CAD; atherosclerosis [ATH]) compared to recurrent carotid stenosis (RES) and radiation-induced stenosis (RAD). Methods: The VR collects provider-reported data on CAS using a Web-based data management system. For this report, data were analyzed at the preprocedure, procedure, predischarge, and 30-day intervals. Results: As of November 20, 2008, there were 4017 patients with CAS with discharge data, of which 72% were due to ATH. A total of 2321 patients were available for 30-day outcomes analysis (1623 ATH, 529 restenosis, 119 radiation, 17 dissection, 3 trauma, and 30 other). Baseline demographics showed that ATH occurred in older patients (72-yearsold), had the greatest history of coronary artery disease (CAD; 62%), myocardial infarction (MI; 24%), valvular heart disease (8%), arrhythmia (16%), congestive heart failure (CHF; 16%), diabetes mellitus (DM; 35%), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD; 20%). RES had a higher degree of baseline stenosis (87.0 vs 85.8 ATH; P=.010), were less likely to be symptomatic (35.5% vs 46.3% ATH; P \u3c.001), but had a greater history of hypertension, peripheral vascular disease (PVD), and smoking. RAD was seen in younger patients (66.6 vs 71.7 ATH; P \u3c.001), were more likely to be male (78.2% vs 60.9% ATH; P \u3c.001), and had less comorbidities overall, with the exception of amaurosis fugax, smoking, and cancer. The only statistically significant difference in perioperative rates was in transient ischemic attack (TIA; 2.7% ATH vs 0.9% RES; P =.02). There were no statistically significant differences in in-hospital death/stroke/MI (ATH 5.4%, RES 3.8%, RAD 4.2%) or at 30 days (ATH 7.1%, RES 5.1%, RAD 5.0%). Even after adjusting for age, gender, symptomatology, CHF, and renal failure, the only statistically significant difference at 30 days was amaurosis fugax between ATH and RAD (odds ratio [OR] 0.13; P =.01). Conclusion: Although patients with ATH have statistically significant comorbidities, they did not have statistically significant increased rates of death/stroke/MI during hospitalization or within 30 days after discharge when compared to RES or RAD. The CAS event rates for ATH vs RES and RAD are similar, despite prior published reports. Symptomatic ATH have statistically significant higher rates of death/stroke/MI compared to asymptomatic cohort. Finally, consistent and accurate entry of long-term data beyond initial hospitalization is essential to fully assess CAS outcomes since a significant number of adverse events occur in the interval from hospital discharge to 30 days. Copyright © 2010 by the Society for Vascular Surgery