Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Cardiol. Sep 26, 2022; 14(9): 473-482
Published online Sep 26, 2022. doi: 10.4330/wjc.v14.i9.473
Thirty-day readmission in patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction: Insights from the nationwide readmission database
Anil Kumar Jha, Chandra P Ojha, Anand M Krishnan, Timir K Paul
Anil Kumar Jha, Internal Medicine, Lowell General Hospital, Lowell, MA 01852, United States
Chandra P Ojha, Department of Medicine, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, El Paso, TX 79905, United States
Anand M Krishnan, Department of Cardiovascular Disease, Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, United States
Timir K Paul, Department of Clinical Education, University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center at Nashville, Nashville, TN 37025, United States
Author contributions: All the authors have equally contributed in developing this manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: This study did not require institutional review board approval as de-identified patient records were used.
Informed consent statement: This study did not require informed consent from patients as de-identified patient records were used.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declare no conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and data-set available from the corresponding author at dranil3jha@gmail.com. Participants gave informed consent for data sharing.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Anil Kumar Jha, MD, Doctor, Internal Medicine, Lowell General Hospital, 1 Hospital Dr, Lowell, MA 01852, United States. dranil3jha@gmail.com
Received: March 25, 2022
Peer-review started: March 25, 2022
First decision: May 31, 2022
Revised: June 16, 2022
Accepted: July 27, 2022
Article in press: July 27, 2022
Published online: September 26, 2022
Processing time: 179 Days and 3.9 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction is a growing problem with a high risk for readmissions. Highlighting the cause and effect of this condition will further help in preparing guidelines to treat and prevent readmissions.

Research motivation

This study will help to understand important variables associated with readmission risks and burden on the American health care resource utilization.

Research objectives

The main research objective is to identify common hospital and patient related variables of increased or decreased risk of readmission in patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. Identifying these variables can help clinicians as well as researchers to further modify these variables to improve the morbidity as well as financial burden.

Research methods

This study used the National Readmissions Dataset for 2017 to obtain patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction using International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes-10. This was a retrospective study. Cox regression analysis was used to identify the significant variables on readmission rate.

Research results

This study clearly showed different hospital-related and patient-related variables which increased the risk of readmissions. Also, we found some interesting results showing the variables with decreased risk of readmissions. Some of these results align with recent study results but some others show different results which needs further research to identify new changes in the dynamics of this condition.

Research conclusions

Our results show that the rates of readmissions are similar to recent studies which indicate that we have to work harder to reduce this rate. We were able to provide different variables which are easy to modify which can reduce the risk of readmissions. Our study showed discharge to rehabilitation facility has no effect on the rate of readmissions.

Research perspectives

Further study on this important topic will be helpful to determine the ongoing change in managing this condition and decreasing its effect both on patients as well as the health care sector.