Postoperative Rehabilitation May Reduce the Risk of Readmission After Groin Hernia Repair.

Thirty-day readmission after surgery has been proposed as a quality-of-care indicator. We explored the effect of postoperative rehabilitation on readmission risk after groin hernia repair. We used the French National Discharge Database to identify all index hospitalizations for groin hernia repair in 2011. Readmissions within 30 days of discharge were clinically classified in terms of their relationship to the index stay. We used logistic regression to adjust the risk of readmission for patient, procedure and hospital factors. Among 122,952 index hospitalizations for inguinal hernia repair, 3,357 (2.7%) related 30-day readmissions were recorded. Reiterated analyses indicated that readmission risk was consistently associated with patient complexity: age (per year after 60 years, OR 1.03, 95% CI 1.02-1.03, P < 0.001), hospitalization within the previous year (OR 1.56, 95% CI 1.44-1.69, P < 0.001), and increasing severity and combination of co-morbidities. Postoperative rehabilitation was identified as a protective factor (OR 0.56, 95% CI 0.46-0.69, P < 0.001). Older patients and those with greater comorbidity are at elevated risk of readmission after inguinal hernia repair. Postoperative rehabilitation may reduce this risk. Further studies are warranted to confirm the protective effect of postoperative rehabilitation.

Changes in hospitalization rates for acute coronary syndrome after a two-phase comprehensive smoking ban.

AIMS: The impact of a comprehensive stepwise smoking ban (2007 and 2008) was assessed by analysing the hospitalization rate for acute coronary syndrome (ACS) in France, between 2003 and 2009. METHODS AND RESULTS: Between 2003 and 2009, 867,164 hospitalizations for ACS were observed among about 23 million administrative reports. The age-and gender-standardized hospitalization rates were calculated and their variation before and after the smoking ban implementation was investigated by Poisson regression that included the ACS seasonal variations and the historical trend. The hospitalization rate decreased by 12.8% (from 269 to 235/100,000) with a significant historical trend reduction (p < 0.10(-3)) in all groups, but in young women. After adjusting for linear trend, reductions linked to the ban remained not significant in all groups: relative risk (RR) from 0.96 (95% CI 0.91-1.01) in men older than 55 years to 0.99 (95% CI 0.93-1.04) in men aged 55 years or less after the first phase, and from 0.96 (95% CI 0.89-1.04) in men older than 55 years to 1.03 (95% CI 0.94-1.12) in women older than 65 years after the second phase of the ban. CONCLUSIONS: This study did not demonstrate a significant effect of a two-phases smoking ban on ACS hospitalization rate. A steadily decrease of this rate over the 7-year period, the past preventive measures in France leading to low levels of passive smoking, and the significant increase in active smoking during the studied period may explain this result. Our study highlights the difficulty of proving an effect of smoking bans in a country with an already low ACS incidence.