Background: Readmission is responsible for a large proportion of inpatient care costs in adult congenital heart disease. There are, however, few data available to identify at-risk patients or to suggest strategies for intervention to prevent rehospitalization.
Methods and results: We conducted an analysis of admissions in patients over the age of 18 years with a 3-digit International Classification of Diseases-Ninth Revision code of 745 to 747 from the State Inpatient Databases of Arkansas (2008-2010), California (2003-2012), Florida (2005-2012), Hawaii (2006-2010), Nebraska (2003-2011), and New York (2005-2012). We investigated index admission diagnoses most commonly associated with 1-year readmission and the most common reasons for readmission. We then selected variables we thought would be associated with increased rates of 1-year readmission and constructed multivariable regression models grouping patients by congenital lesion, to examine the relative contribution of the specified variables to readmission risk for each lesion. A total of 64 420 patients were included in the final analysis. Thirty-nine percent of patients experienced a readmission within 12 months of an index admission. Compared with those who did not experience a readmission, those who did were more likely to have had a primary diagnosis of congestive heart failure at the time of index admission, and the most common diagnoses at the time of readmission were congestive heart failure and arrhythmia. There is lesion-specific heterogeneity in risk factors for readmission.
Conclusions: Patients with adult congenital heart disease have high rates of readmission, predominantly for congestive heart failure and arrhythmia. Predictors of readmission are lesion specific, and future strategies aimed at decreasing readmission rate will likely need to be individualized.
Keywords: International Classification of Diseases; arrhythmias, cardiac; heart failure; hospitalization; patient readmission.
© 2016 American Heart Association, Inc.