Is residential exposure to oil refineries a novel contextual risk factor for coronary heart disease?

Despite a multi-decade decrease in cardiovascular disease, geographic disparities have widened, with excess mortality concentrated within the United States (U.S.) South. Petroleum production and refining, a major contributor to climate change, is concentrated within the U.S. South and emits multiple classes of atherogenic pollutants. We investigated whether residential exposure to oil refineries could explain variation in self-reported coronary heart disease (CHD) prevalence among adults in southern states for the year 2018, where the majority of oil refinery activity occurs (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma). We examined census tract-level association between oil refineries and CHD prevalence. We used a double matching method to adjust for measured and unmeasured spatial confounders: one-to-n distance matching and one-to-one generalized propensity score matching. Exposure metrics were constructed based on proximity to refineries, activities of refineries, and wind speed/direction. For all census tracts within 10 km of refineries, self-reported CHD prevalence ranged from 1.2% to 17.6%. Compared to census tracts located at ≥5 km and <10 km, one standard deviation increase in the exposure within 5 km of refineries was associated with a 0.33 (95% confidence interval: 0.04, 0.63) percentage point increase in the prevalence. A total of 1119.0 (123.5, 2114.2) prevalent cases or 1.6% (0.2, 3.1) of CHD prevalence in areas within 5 km from refineries were potentially explained by exposure to oil refineries. At the census tract-level, the prevalence of CHD explained by exposure to oil refineries ranged from 0.02% (0.00, 0.05) to 47.4% (5.2, 89.5). Thus, although we cannot rule out potential confounding by other personal risk factors, CHD prevalence was found to be higher in populations living nearer to oil refineries, which may suggest that exposure to oil refineries can increase CHD risk, warranting further investigation.

Assessment of Regional Nursing Home Preparedness for and Regulatory Responsiveness to Wildfire Risk in the Western US.

Importance: It is uncertain whether emergency preparedness and regulatory oversight for US nursing homes are aligned with local wildfire risk. Objective: To evaluate the likelihood that nursing homes at elevated risk of wildfire exposure meet US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) emergency preparedness standards and to compare the time to reinspection by exposure status. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cross-sectional study of nursing homes in the continental western US from January 1, 2017, through December 31, 2019, was conducted using cross-sectional and survival analyses. The prevalence of high-risk facilities within 5 km of areas at or exceeding the 85th percentile of nationalized wildfire risk across areas overseen by 4 CMS regional offices (New Mexico, Mountain West, Pacific/Southwest, and Pacific Northwest) was determined. Critical emergency preparedness deficiencies cited during CMS Life Safety Code Inspections were identified. Data analysis was performed from October 10 to December 12, 2022. Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcome classified whether facilities were cited for at least 1 critical emergency preparedness deficiency during the observation window. Regionally stratified generalized estimating equations were used to evaluate associations between risk status and the presence and number of deficiencies, adjusted for nursing home characteristics. For the subset of facilities with deficiencies, differences in restricted mean survival time to reinspection were evaluated. Results: Of the 2218 nursing homes in this study, 1219 (55.0%) were exposed to elevated wildfire risk. The Pacific/Southwest had the highest percentage of both exposed (680 of 870 [78.2%]) and unexposed (359 of 486 [73.9%]) facilities with 1 or more deficiencies. The Mountain West had the largest difference in the percentage of exposed (87 of 215 [40.5%]) vs unexposed (47 of 193 [24.4%]) facilities with 1 or more deficiencies. Exposed facilities in the Pacific Northwest had the greatest mean (SD) number of deficiencies (4.3 [5.4]). Exposure was associated with the presence of deficiencies in the Mountain West (odds ratio [OR], 2.12 [95% CI, 1.50-3.01]) and the presence (OR, 1.84 [95% CI, 1.55-2.18]) and number (rate ratio, 1.39 [95% CI, 1.06-1.83]) of deficiencies in the Pacific Northwest. Exposed Mountain West facilities with deficiencies were reinspected later, on average, than unexposed facilities (adjusted restricted mean survival time difference, 91.2 days [95% CI, 30.6-151.8 days]). Conclusions and Relevance: In this cross-sectional study, regional heterogeneity in nursing home emergency preparedness for and regulatory responsiveness to local wildfire risk was observed. These findings suggest that there may be opportunities to improve the responsiveness of nursing homes to and regulatory oversight of surrounding wildfire risk.

Nursing home infection control strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND: The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 awarded $500 million toward scaling "strike teams" to mitigate the impact of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) within nursing homes. The Massachusetts Nursing Facility Accountability and Support Package (NFASP) piloted one such model during the first weeks of the pandemic, providing nursing homes financial, administrative, and educational support. For a subset of nursing homes deemed high-risk, the state offered supplemental, in-person technical infection control support. METHODS: Using state death certificate data and federal nursing home occupancy data, we examined longitudinal all-cause mortality per 100,000 residents and changes in occupancy across NFASP participants and subgroups that varied in their receipt of the supplemental intervention. RESULTS: Nursing home mortality peaked in the weeks preceding the NFASP, with a steeper increase among those receiving the supplemental intervention. There were contemporaneous declines in weekly occupancy. The potential for temporal confounding and differential selection across NFASP subgroups precluded estimation of causal effects of the intervention on mortality. CONCLUSIONS: We offer policy and design suggestions for future strike team iterations that could inform the allocation of state and federal funding. We recommend expanded data collection infrastructure and, ideally, randomized assignment to intervention subgroups to support causal inference as strike team models are scaled under the direction of state and federal agencies.

Association of Nursing Home Exposure to Hurricane-Related Inundation With Emergency Preparedness.

Importance: Whether US nursing homes are well prepared for exposure to hurricane-related inundation is uncertain. Objectives: To estimate the prevalence of nursing homes exposed to hurricane-related inundation and evaluate whether exposed facilities are more likely to meet Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) emergency preparedness standards. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cross-sectional study included CMS-certified nursing homes in Coastal Atlantic and Gulf Coast states from January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2019. The prevalence of facilities exposed to at least 2 feet of hurricane-related inundation used models from the National Hurricane Center across coastal areas overseen by 5 CMS regional offices: New England, New York metropolitan area, Mid-Atlantic region, Southeast and Eastern Gulf Coast, and Western Gulf Coast. Critical emergency preparedness deficiencies cited during CMS life safety code inspections were identified. Main Outcomes and Measures: The analysis used generalized estimating equations with binomial and negative binomial distributions to evaluate associations between exposure status and the presence and number of critical emergency preparedness deficiencies. Regionally stratified associations (odds ratios [ORs]) and rate ratios [RRs]) with 95% CIs, adjusted for state-level fixed effects and nursing home characteristics, were reported. Results: Of 5914 nursing homes, 617 (10.4%) were at risk of inundation exposure, and 1763 (29.8%) had a critical emergency preparedness deficiency. Exposed facilities were less likely to be rural, were larger, and had similar CMS health inspection, quality, and staffing ratings compared with unexposed facilities. Exposure was positively associated with the presence and number of emergency preparedness deficiencies for the nursing homes within the Mid-Atlantic region (adjusted OR, 1.91 [95% CI, 1.15-3.20]; adjusted RR, 2.51 [95% CI, 1.41-4.47]). Conversely, exposure was negatively associated with the number of emergency preparedness deficiencies among facilities within the Western Gulf Coast (aRR, 0.55 [95% CI, 0.36-0.86]). The associations for the number of emergency preparedness deficiencies remained after correction for multiple comparisons. Conclusions and Relevance: The findings of this cross-sectional study suggest that the association between exposure to hurricane-related inundation and nursing home emergency preparedness differs considerably across the Coastal Atlantic and Gulf regulatory regions. These findings further suggest that there may be opportunities to reduce regional heterogeneity and improve the alignment of nursing home emergency preparedness with surrounding environmental risks.

Reappraising the public health benefits conferred by environmental policy: Considerations for an aging society.

Although addressing environmental pollution and unprecedented societal aging are concurrent public health challenges, rarely is the relationship between the two considered. Current approaches to valuing the public health benefits conferred by environmental policy may be ill-suited to aging populations. We describe the limitations of the age-invariant approach used by the United States Environmental Protection Agency to estimate the public health benefits corresponding to environmental regulation. These include the poor age-representativeness of the samples informing the valuation of mortality risk reduction, the exclusion of age-related outcomes from valuation, and the omission of age-related third-party expenditures. We offer an empirical framework that could address these limitations. Our recommendations could improve the calibration of environmental regulatory analysis to the changing age distribution of the United States population.

Evaluating California nursing homes' emergency preparedness for wildfire exposure.

BACKGROUND: The relationship between the risk of exposure to environmental hazards and the emergency preparedness of nursing homes is not well-understood. This study evaluates the association between wildfire exposure risk and nursing home emergency preparedness. METHODS: From a sample of Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) certified nursing homes in California, we determined the prevalence of "exposed" facilities that were located within 5 km of a wildfire risk area, as informed by a field-tested model. Among the 1182 nursing homes, we identified emergency preparedness deficiencies from January 2017 to December 2019. We estimated associations between exposure and emergency preparedness deficiencies using unadjusted and adjusted generalized estimating equations with logistic and negative binomial distributions. RESULTS: A greater percentage of the 495 exposed facilities had at least one emergency preparedness deficiency than the 687 unexposed facilities (83.9% vs 76.9%). The mean (3.6 vs 3.2) and median (3 vs 2) numbers of emergency preparedness deficiencies were also greater for exposed facilities. In both the unadjusted and adjusted analyses, exposure to wildfire risk was significantly associated with the likelihood of at least one emergency preparedness deficiency (adjusted odds ratio 1.52, p-value 0.007). There was a positive but not statistically significant association between exposure and the number of emergency preparedness deficiencies assigned to a nursing home (adjusted rate ratio 1.12, p-value 0.062). These results were consistent in analyses that used more stringent distance- and severity-thresholds to define exposure status. CONCLUSION: California nursing homes at heightened risk of exposure to wildfires have poorer emergency preparedness than unexposed facilities. These findings suggest that nursing home management and staff may be unaware of important environmental risks to which their facilities are exposed. Improved integration of nursing homes into community disaster planning may better align facility preparedness with surrounding wildfire risk.

Residential exposure to petroleum refining and stroke in the southern United States.

BACKGROUND: The southern United States (U.S.) sustains a disproportionate burden of incident stroke and associated mortality, compared to other parts of the U.S. A large proportion of this risk remains unexplained. Petroleum production and refining (PPR) is concentrated within this region and emits multiple pollutants implicated in stroke pathogenesis. The relationship between residential PPR exposure and stroke has not been studied. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to investigate the census tract-level association between residential PPR exposure and stroke prevalence for adults (≥18 years) in seven southern U.S. states in 2018. METHODS: We conducted spatial distance- and generalized propensity score-matched analysis that adjusts for sociodemographic factors, smoking, and unmeasured spatial confounding. PPR was measured as inverse-distance weighted averages of petroleum production within 2.5km or 5km from refineries, which was strongly correlated with measured levels of sulfur dioxide, a byproduct of PPR. RESULTS: The prevalence of self-reported stroke ranged from 0.4% to 12.7% for all the census tracts of the seven states. People with low socioeconomic status and of Hispanic ethnicity resided closer to petroleum refineries. The non-Hispanic Black population was exposed to higher PPR, while the non-Hispanic White population was exposed to lower PPR. Residential PPR exposure was significantly associated with stroke prevalence. One standard deviation increase in PPR within 5km from refineries was associated with 0.22 (95% confidence interval: 0.09, 0.34) percentage point increase in stroke prevalence. PPR explained 5.6% (2.4, 8.9) of stroke prevalence in the exposed areas. These values differed by states: 1.1% (0.5, 1.7) in Alabama to 11.7% (4.9, 18.6) in Mississippi, and by census tract-level: 0.08% (0.03, 0.13) to 25.3% (10.6, 40.0). CONCLUSIONS: PPR is associated with self-reported stroke prevalence, suggesting possible links between pollutants emitted from refineries and stroke. The increased prevalence due to PPR may differ by sociodemographic factors.

Evaluating The Accuracy Of Medicare Risk Adjustment For Alzheimer's Disease And Related Dementias.

In 2020 Medicare reintroduced Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) Hierarchical Condition Categories (HCCs) to risk-adjust Medicare Advantage and accountable care organization (ACO) payments. The potential for Medicare spending increases from this policy change are not well understood because the baseline accuracy of ADRD HCCs is uncertain. Using linked 2016-18 claims and electronic health record data from a large ACO, we evaluated the accuracy of claims-based ADRD HCCs against a reference standard of clinician-adjudicated disease. An estimated 7.5 percent of beneficiaries had clinician-adjudicated ADRD. Among those with ADRD HCCs, 34 percent did not have clinician-adjudicated disease. The false-negative and false-positive rates were 22.7 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively. Medicare spending for those with false-negative ADRD HCCs exceeded that of true positives by $14,619 per beneficiary. If, after the reintroduction of risk adjustment for ADRD, all false negatives were coded as having ADRD, expenditure benchmarks for beneficiaries with ADRD would increase by 9 percent. Monitoring ADRD coding could become challenging in the setting of concurrent incentives to decrease false-negative rates and increase false-positive rates.

Evaluation of Claims-Based Ascertainment of Alzheimer Disease and Related Dementias Across Health Care Settings.

This cohort study evaluates the ascertainment of Alzheimer disease and related dementia using diagnostic codes in various health care settings.

Identifying Medicare Beneficiaries With Delirium.

BACKGROUND: Each year, thousands of older adults develop delirium, a serious, preventable condition. At present, there is no well-validated method to identify patients with delirium when using Medicare claims data or other large datasets. We developed and assessed the performance of classification algorithms based on longitudinal Medicare administrative data that included International Classification of Diseases, 10th Edition diagnostic codes. METHODS: Using a linked electronic health record (EHR)-Medicare claims dataset, 2 neurologists and 2 psychiatrists performed a standardized review of EHR records between 2016 and 2018 for a stratified random sample of 1002 patients among 40,690 eligible subjects. Reviewers adjudicated delirium status (reference standard) during this 3-year window using a structured protocol. We calculated the probability that each patient had delirium as a function of classification algorithms based on longitudinal Medicare claims data. We compared the performance of various algorithms against the reference standard, computing calibration-in-the-large, calibration slope, and the area-under-receiver-operating-curve using 10-fold cross-validation (CV). RESULTS: Beneficiaries had a mean age of 75 years, were predominately female (59%), and non-Hispanic Whites (93%); a review of the EHR indicated that 6% of patients had delirium during the 3 years. Although several classification algorithms performed well, a relatively simple model containing counts of delirium-related diagnoses combined with patient age, dementia status, and receipt of antipsychotic medications had the best overall performance [CV- calibration-in-the-large <0.001, CV-slope 0.94, and CV-area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (0.88 95% confidence interval: 0.84-0.91)]. CONCLUSIONS: A delirium classification model using Medicare administrative data and International Classification of Diseases, 10th Edition diagnosis codes can identify beneficiaries with delirium in large datasets.

Goals of Care Documentation: Insights from A Pilot Implementation Study.

CONTEXT: The Life Sustaining Treatment Decision Initiative is a national effort by the Veterans Health Administration to ensure goals of care documentation occurs among all patients at high risk of life-threatening events. OBJECTIVES: Examine likelihood to receive goals of care documentation and explore associations between documentation and perceived patient care experience at the individual and site level. METHODS: Retrospective, quality improvement analysis of initiative pilot data from four geographically diverse Veterans Affairs (VA) sites (Fall 2014-Winter 2016) before national roll-out. Goals of care documentation according to gender, marital status, urban/rural status, race/ethnicity, age, serious health condition, and Care Assessment Needs scores. Association between goals of care documentation and perceived patient care experience analyzed based on Bereaved Family Survey outcomes of overall care, communication, and support. RESULTS: Veterans were more likely to have goals of care documentation if widowed, urban residents, and of white race. Patients older than 65-years and those with a higher Care Assessment Needs score were twice as likely as a frail patient to have goals of care documented. One pilot site demonstrated a positive association between documentation and perceived support. Pilot site was a statistically significant predictor of the occurrence of goals of care documentation and Bereaved Family Survey scores. CONCLUSION: Older and seriously ill patients were most likely to have goals of care documented. Association between a documented goals of care conversation and perceived patient care experience were largely unsupported. Site-level largely contributed to understanding the likelihood of documentation and care experience.

Association Between Neighborhood Disadvantage and Functional Well-being in Community-Living Older Persons.

Importance: Neighborhood disadvantage is a novel social determinant of health that could adversely affect the functional well-being of older persons. Deficiencies in resource-poor environments can potentially be addressed through social and public health interventions. Objective: To evaluate whether estimates of active and disabled life expectancy differ on the basis of neighborhood disadvantage after accounting for individual-level socioeconomic characteristics and other prognostic factors. Design, Setting, and Participants: This prospective longitudinal cohort study included 754 nondisabled community-living persons, aged 70 years or older, who were members of the Precipitating Events Project in south central Connecticut from March 1998 to June 2020. Main Outcomes and Measures: Disability in 4 essential activities of daily living (bathing, dressing, walking, and transferring) was assessed each month. Scores on the Area Deprivation Index, a census-based socioeconomic measure with 17 education, employment, housing quality, and poverty indicators, were obtained through linkages with the 2000 Neighborhood Atlas. Area Deprivation Index scores were dichotomized at the 80th state percentile to distinguish neighborhoods that were disadvantaged (81-100) from those that were not (1-80). Results: Among the 754 participants, the mean (SD) age was 78.4 (5.3) years, and 487 (64.6%) were female. Within 5-year age increments from 70 to 90, active life expectancy was consistently lower in participants from neighborhoods that were disadvantaged vs not disadvantaged, and these differences persisted and remained statistically significant after adjustment for individual-level race and ethnicity, education, income, and other prognostic factors. At age 70 years, adjusted estimates (95% CI) for active life expectancy (in years) were 12.3 (11.5-13.1) in the disadvantaged group and 14.2 (13.5-14.7) in the nondisadvantaged group. At each age, participants from disadvantaged neighborhoods spent a greater percentage of their projected remaining life disabled, relative to those from nondisadvantaged neighborhoods, with adjusted values (SE) ranging from 17.7 (0.8) vs 15.3 (0.5) at age 70 years to 55.0 (1.7) vs 48.1 (1.3) at age 90 years. Conclusions and Relevance: In this prospective longitudinal cohort study, living in a disadvantaged neighborhood was associated with lower active life expectancy and a greater percentage of projected remaining life with disability. By addressing deficiencies in resource-poor environments, new or expanded social and public health initiatives have the potential to improve the functional well-being of community-living older persons and, in turn, reduce health disparities in the US.

Identifying Medicare beneficiaries with dementia.

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: No data exist regarding the validity of International Classification of Disease (ICD)-10 dementia diagnoses against a clinician-adjudicated reference standard within Medicare claims data. We examined the accuracy of claims-based diagnoses with respect to expert clinician adjudication using a novel database with individual-level linkages between electronic health record (EHR) and claims. DESIGN: In this retrospective observational study, two neurologists and two psychiatrists performed a standardized review of patients' medical records from January 2016 to December 2018 and adjudicated dementia status. We measured the accuracy of three claims-based definitions of dementia against the reference standard. SETTING: Mass-General-Brigham Healthcare (MGB), Massachusetts, USA. PARTICIPANTS: From an eligible population of 40,690 fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare beneficiaries, aged 65 years and older, within the MGB Accountable Care Organization (ACO), we generated a random sample of 1002 patients, stratified by the pretest likelihood of dementia using administrative surrogates. INTERVENTION: None. MEASUREMENTS: We evaluated the accuracy (area under receiver operating curve [AUROC]) and calibration (calibration-in-the-large [CITL] and calibration slope) of three ICD-10 claims-based definitions of dementia against clinician-adjudicated standards. We applied inverse probability weighting to reconstruct the eligible population and reported the mean and 95% confidence interval (95% CI) for all performance characteristics, using 10-fold cross-validation (CV). RESULTS: Beneficiaries had an average age of 75.3 years and were predominately female (59%) and non-Hispanic whites (93%). The adjudicated prevalence of dementia in the eligible population was 7%. The best-performing definition demonstrated excellent accuracy (CV-AUC 0.94; 95% CI 0.92-0.96) and was well-calibrated to the reference standard of clinician-adjudicated dementia (CV-CITL <0.001, CV-slope 0.97). CONCLUSION: This study is the first to validate ICD-10 diagnostic codes against a robust and replicable approach to dementia ascertainment, using a real-world clinical reference standard. The best performing definition includes diagnostic codes with strong face validity and outperforms an updated version of a previously validated ICD-9 definition of dementia.

Pilot of the Life-Sustaining Treatment Decisions Initiative Among Veterans With Serious Illness.

BACKGROUND: Prior to national spread, the Department of Veterans Affairs implemented a pilot of the life-sustaining treatment decisions initiative (LSTDI) to promote proactive goals of care conversations (GoCC) with seriously ill patients, including policy and practice standards, an electronic documentation template and order set, and implementation support. AIM: To describe a 2-year pilot of the LSTDI at 4 demonstration sites. DESIGN: Prospective observational study. SETTING/PARTICIPANTS: A total of 6664 patients who had at least one GoCC. RESULTS: Descriptive statistics characterized patient demographics, goals of care, LST decisions, and risk of hospitalization or mortality among patients with at least one GoCC. Participants were on average 71.4 years old, 93.2% male, 87.1% white, and 64.7% urban; 27.3% died by the end of the pilot period. Fifteen percent lacked decision-making capacity (DMC). Nonmutually exclusive goals included to be cured (7.6%), to prolong life (34%), to improve/maintain quality of life (61.5%), to be comfortable (53%), to obtain support for family/caregiver (8.4%), to achieve life goals (2.1%), and other (10.5%). Many GoCCs resulted in a do not resuscitate (DNR) order (58.8%). Patients without DMC were more likely to have comfort-oriented goals (77.3% vs 48.8%) and a DNR (84% vs 52.6%). Chart abstraction supported content validity of GoCC documentation. CONCLUSION: The pilot demonstrated that standardizing practices for eliciting and documenting GoCCs resulted in customized documentation of goals of care and LST decisions of a large number of seriously ill patients and established the feasibility of spreading standardized practices throughout a large integrated health care system.

Accuracy of diagnosis and health service codes in identifying frailty in Medicare data.

BACKGROUND: Capturing frailty within administrative claims data may help to identify high-risk patients and inform population health management strategies. Although it is common to ascertain frailty status utilizing claims-based surrogates (e.g. diagnosis and health service codes) selected according to clinical knowledge, the accuracy of this approach has not yet been examined. We evaluated the accuracy of claims-based surrogates against two clinical definitions of frailty. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted in a Health and Retirement Study subsample of 3097 participants, aged 65 years or older and with at least 12-months of continuous fee-for-service Medicare enrollment. We defined 18 previously utilized claims-based surrogates of frailty from Medicare data and evaluated each against clinical reference standards, ascertained from a direct examination: a deficit accumulation frailty index (FI) (range: 0-1) and frailty phenotype. We also compared the accuracy of the total count of 18 claims-based surrogates with that of a validated claims-based FI model, comprised of 93 claims-based variables. RESULTS: 19% of participants met clinical criteria for the clinical frailty phenotype. The mean clinical FI for our sample was 0.20 (standard deviation 0.13). Hospital Beds and associated supplies was the claims-based surrogate associated with the highest clinical FI (mean FI 0.49). Claims-based surrogates had low sensitivity ranging from 0.01 (cachexia, adult failure to thrive, anorexia) to 0.38 (malaise and fatigue) and high specificity ranging from 0.79 (malaise and fatigue) to 0.99 (cachexia, adult failure to thrive, anorexia) in discriminating the clinical frailty phenotype. Compared with a validated claims-based FI, the total count of claims-based surrogates demonstrated lower Spearman correlation with the clinical FI (0.41 [95% CI 0.38-0.44] versus 0.59 [95% CI, 0.56-0.61]) and poorer discrimination of the frailty phenotype (C-statistics 0.68 [95% CI, 0.66-0.70] versus 0.75 [95% CI, 0.73-0.77]). CONCLUSIONS: Claims-based surrogates, selected according to clinical knowledge, do not accurately capture frailty in Medicare claims data. A simple count of claims-based surrogates improves accuracy but remains inferior to a claims-based FI model.

Comparative utility of frailty to a general prognostic score in identifying patients at risk for poor outcomes after aortic valve replacement.

BACKGROUND: Current guidelines recommend considering life expectancy before aortic valve replacement (AVR). We compared the performance of a general mortality index, the Lee index, to a frailty index. METHODS: We conducted a prospective cohort study of 246 older adults undergoing surgical (SAVR) or transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) at a single academic medical center. We compared performance of the Lee index to a deficit accumulation frailty index (FI). Logistic regression was used to assess the association of Lee index or FI with poor outcome, defined as death or functional decline with severe symptoms at 12 months. Discrimination was assessed using C-statistics. RESULTS: In the overall cohort, 44 experienced poor outcome (31 deaths, 13 functional decline with severe symptoms). The risk of poor outcome by Lee index quartiles was 6.8% (reference), 17.9% (odds ratio [OR], 3.0; 95% confidence interval, [0.9-10.2]), 20.0% (OR 3.4; [1.0-11.4]), and 34.0% (OR 7.1; [2.2-22.6]) (p-for-trend = 0.001). Risk of poor outcome by FI quartiles was 3.6% (reference), 10.3% (OR 3.1; [0.6-15.8]), 25.0% (OR 8.8; [1.9-41.0]), and 37.3% (OR 15.8; [3.5-71.1]) (p-for-trend< 0.001). The Lee index predicted the risk of poor outcome in the SAVR cohort Lee index (quartiles 1-4: 2.1, 4.0, 15.4, and 20.0%; p-for-trend = 0.04), but not in the TAVR cohort (quartiles 1-4: 27.3, 29.0, 21.3, 35.4%; p-for-trend = 0.42). In contrast, the FI did not predict the risk of poor outcome well in the SAVR cohort (quartiles 1-4: 2.3, 4.4, 15.8, and 0%; p-for-trend = 0.24), however in the TAVR cohort (quartiles 1-4: 9.1, 14.3, 29.7, and 40.7%; p-for-trend = 0.004). Compared to the Lee index, an FI demonstrated higher C-statistics in the overall (Lee index versus FI: 0.680 versus 0.735; p = 0.03) and TAVR (0.560 versus 0.644; p = 0.03) cohorts, but not SAVR cohort (0.724 versus 0.766; p = 0.09). CONCLUSIONS: While a general mortality index Lee index predicted death or functional decline with severe symptoms at 12 months well among SAVR patients, the FI derived from a multi-domain geriatric assessment better informs risk-stratification for high-risk TAVR patients.