Associations between procedural volume, costs, and outcomes of septal reduction therapies for obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in US hospitals
Creators: name: Hernandez, Ervant J. Maksabedian
name: Krishnaswami, Shanthi
name: Dubey, Anandkumar
name: Singh, Nisha
name: Jonkman, Anna G.
name: Cao, Zhun
name: Tyagi, Manu
name: Lipkin, Craig
name: Wang, Andrew
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2025
Subjects: subject: Medicine
subject: Sociology
subject: FOS: Sociology
subject: Science Policy

description: We assessed the relationship between hospital septal reduction therapy (SRT) procedural volume and clinical outcomes, healthcare resource utilization, and hospital costs. This cross-sectional study used 2012–2022 US hospital data from the PINC AI Healthcare Database for adults with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) undergoing alcohol septal ablation (ASA) or septal myectomy (SM; with or without mitral valve repair or replacement [MVRR]). We categorized hospital procedural volume into tertiles according to the numbers of procedures performed and made pairwise comparisons of patient characteristics, clinical events, healthcare utilization, and hospital costs between tertiles. We conducted multivariable analyses (adjusted for patient, clinical, and hospital characteristics) for index hospitalization length of stay, cost, and 30-day readmission rates. Overall, 3,068 patients with HCM (across 315 hospitals) underwent SRT (ASA: 1,400; SM: 1,668). Index visit in-hospital mortality was 1.1–1.5% among individuals undergoing ASA, 3.2–7.4% for SM with MVRR, and 2.8–3.8% for SM without MVRR. There were no significant differences in in-hospital mortality or stroke/transient ischemic attack at index visits between the hospital procedural volume tertiles for ASA or SM. Adjusted hospital length of stay, costs, and readmission rates were significantly greater in low-volume than high-volume hospitals for ASA (<i>p</i> &lt; 0.001). Similar trends were reported for SM for length of stay and costs (<i>p</i> &lt; 0.001). This study relied upon accurate and complete reporting of diagnoses and procedures by hospitals. Patients were not randomly assigned, potentially leading to selection bias. Only in-hospital costs were evaluated. Follow-up events were only captured if they occurred in the same healthcare facility. Resource utilization and in-hospital costs for patients undergoing SRT are lower in high procedural volume hospitals than low procedural volume hospitals. SRT procedure volume remains low even in hospitals with the highest relative procedural volumes, highlighting a need for globally accessible therapies that improve outcomes. This study focused on treatments for obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a condition in which the heart muscle is abnormally thick, thus obstructing blood flow from the heart. In patients who have symptoms due to obstructive HCM, treatment options include procedures such as alcohol septal ablation (ASA) and septal myectomy (SM) as last-line support to reduce muscle thickness, thereby improving symptoms and quality of life. Our research found that in US hospitals, the yearly number of these procedures was low on average, but hospitals with more experience performing these heart procedures had lower costs, shorter hospital stays, and better patient outcomes than hospitals performing a lower number of procedures. The absolute number of ASA and SM procedures was still low even in hospitals that performed relatively more of these.