Thirty-day medical and surgical readmission following prenatal versus postnatal myelomeningocele repair.

OBJECTIVE

Hospital readmission is an important quality metric that has not been evaluated in prenatal versus postnatal myelomeningocele (MMC) repair. This study compares hospital readmission outcomes between these two groups as well as their etiologies.

METHODS

The medical records of patients who had undergone MMC repair in the period from 2011 to 2017 at a single academic medical center were retrospectively reviewed. Collected clinical data included surgery and defect details, neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) stay, and any readmissions or surgical procedures up to 1 year after surgery. Patient and defect characteristics, readmission outcomes at 30 and 60 days and 1 year after discharge from the NICU, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) diversion surgery rates were analyzed with the two-tailed t-test and/or k-sample test on the equality of medians.

RESULTS

A total of 24 prenatal and 34 postnatal MMC repairs were completed during the study period. Prenatally repaired patients were born more prematurely (p < 0.001) and with lower birth weights (p < 0.001), although the NICU stay was similar between the two groups (p = 0.59). Fewer prenatally repaired patients were readmitted at 30 days (p = 0.005), 90 days (p = 0.004), and 1 year (p = 0.007) than the postnatal repair group. Hydrocephalus was the most common readmission etiology, and 29% of prenatal repair patients required CSF diversion at 1 year versus 81% of the postnatal repair group (p < 0.01). Prenatal patients who required CSF diversion had a higher body weight (p = 0.02) and an older age (p = 0.01) at the time of CSF diversion surgery than the postnatal group.

CONCLUSIONS

Patients with prenatal MMC repair had fewer hospital readmissions at 30 days, 60 days, and 1 year than the postnatal repair group, despite similar NICU lengths of stay. The prenatal repair group had lower requirements for CSF diversion at 1 year and was older with greater body weights at the time of CSF diversion surgery, compared to those of the postnatal repair group. Future study of hospital quality metrics such as readmissions should be performed to better understand outcomes of these two procedures.