Impact of frailty on acute outcomes of endovascular thoracic and abdominal aneurysm repair.

BACKGROUND

While coding-based frailty tools may readily identify at-risk patients, they have not been adopted into screening guidelines for endovascular abdominal aortic aneurysm repair or thoracic endovascular aortic repair at the national level. We aimed to characterize the impact of frailty on clinical outcomes and resource use after endovascular aneurysm repair and thoracic endovascular aortic repair using a nationally representative cohort.

METHODS

The 2005 to 2018 National Inpatient Sample was queried to identify all adults undergoing elective endovascular abdominal aortic aneurysm repair or thoracic endovascular aortic repair. Patients were considered "frail" if they suffered from any frailty-defining diagnoses in the Johns Hopkins Adjusted Clinical Groups. Multivariable regression models were used to identify independent associations with outcomes of interest including in-hospital mortality, nonhome discharge, and hospitalization costs.

RESULTS

Of an estimated 301,869 patients, 273,415 (90.6%) underwent endovascular aneurysm repair and the remainder thoracic endovascular aortic repair. Frailty prevalence was lower in the endovascular aneurysm repair cohort (2.3%) compared with thoracic endovascular aortic repair (4.7%). After adjustment, frailty was associated with higher in-hospital mortality (endovascular aneurysm repair odds ratio 4.0; thoracic endovascular aortic repair odds ratio 2.5), nonhome discharge rates (endovascular aneurysm repair odds ratio 7.2; thoracic endovascular aortic repair odds ratio 4.2), and predicted costs (endovascular aneurysm repair ß coefficient +$10.6K; thoracic endovascular aortic repair ß coefficient +$38.2K) for both cohorts.

CONCLUSION

Given that frailty portends inferior outcomes for both endovascular aneurysm repair and thoracic endovascular aortic repair, its inclusion in existing risk models may better inform shared decision-making.