• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.388-396
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• 2022

Background: In this study, we present recent trends in heart valve surgery in Korea through analyses of data from the Korea Heart Valve Surgery Registry (KHVSR). Methods: We enrolled 8,981 patients who were registered in the KHVSR from 2017 to 2020. Yearly trends in patients' baseline characteristics, surgical profiles, and early mortality rates were explored. The observed/expected mortality ratio (O/E ratio), calculated from the actual mortality in the KHVSR and the predicted mortality estimated using the EuroSCORE II, was also analyzed. Results: The proportion of aortic valve surgery significantly increased from 56.8% in 2017 to 60.3% in 2020. The proportion of all combined procedures and minimally invasive surgery significantly increased over the 4-year study period. The operative mortality rate was 2.9% in the entire cohort, while mitral valve repair showed the lowest mortality risk (0.9%). The mortality rates of isolated aortic valve replacement (AVR) significantly decreased from 2.1% in 2017 to 0.8% in 2020 (p=0.016). Overall, the O/E ratio was 0.784 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.677-0.902) demonstrating significantly lower actual mortality risks than expected based on the EuroSCORE II. In particular, the O/E ratios were as low as 0.364 (95% CI, 0.208-0.591) for isolated AVR. Conclusion: The recent data from the KHVSR showed increasing trends for complex procedures and minimally invasive surgery in heart valve surgery in Korea, and demonstrated remarkably low risks of operative mortality.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.303-309
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• 2014

Objective : The purpose of this study was to retrospectively review cases of intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) medically treated at our institution to determine if the CT angiography (CTA) 'spot sign' predicts in-hospital mortality and clinical outcome at 3 months in patients with spontaneous ICH. Methods : We conducted a retrospective review of all consecutive patients who were admitted to the department of neurosurgery. Clinical data of patients with ICH were collected by 2 neurosurgeons blinded to the radiological data and at the 90-day follow-up. Results : Multivariate logistic regression analysis identified predictors of poor outcome; we found that hematoma location, spot sign, and intraventricular hemorrhage were independent predictors of poor outcome. In-hospital mortality was 57.4% (35 of 61) in the CTA spot-sign positive group versus 7.9% (10 of 126) in the CTA spot-sign negative group. In multivariate logistic analysis, we found that presence of spot sign and presence of volume expansion were independent predictors for the in-hospital mortality of ICH. Conclusion : The spot sign is a strong independent predictor of hematoma expansion, mortality, and poor clinical outcome in primary ICH. In this study, we emphasized the importance of hematoma expansion as a therapeutic target in both clinical practice and research.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.380-388
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• 2014

Background: The volume of surgery has been examined as a major source of variation in outcome after surgery. This study investigated the direct effect of surgery volume to in hospitals mortality and the moderating effect of structural complexity-the level of diversity and sophistication of technology a hospital applied in patient care-to the volume outcome relationship. Methods: Discharge summary data of 11,827 cancer patients who underwent surgery and were discharged during a month period in 2010 and 2011 were analyzed. The analytic model included the independent variables such as surgery volume of a hospital, structural complexity measured by the number of diagnosis a hospital examined, and their interaction term. This study used a hierarchical logistic regression model to test for an association between hospital complexity and mortality rates and to test for the moderating effect in the volume outcome relationship. Results: As structural complexity increased the probability of in-hospital mortality after cancer surgery reduced. The interaction term between surgery volume and structural complexity was also statistically significant. The interaction effect was the strongest among the patients group who had surgery in low volume hospitals. Conclusion: The structural complexity and volume of surgery should be considered simultaneously in studying volume outcome relationship and in developing policies that aim to reduce mortality after cancer surgery.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.244-252
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• 2001

Objective : Health insurers and policy makers are increasingly examining the hospital mortality rate as an indicator of hospital quality and performance. To be meaningful, a risk-adjustment of the death rates must be implemented. This study reviewed 5 severity measurement methods and applied them to the same data set to determine whether judgments regarding the severity-adjusted hospital mortality rates were sensitive to the specific severity measure. Methods : The medical records of 584 patients who underwent coronary artery bypass graft surgery in 6 general hospitals during 1996 and 1997 were reviewed by trained nurses. The MedisGroups, Disease Staging, Computerized Severity Index, APACHE III and KDRG were used to quantify severity of the patients. The predictive probability of death was calculated for each patient in the sample from a multivariate logistic regression model including the severity score, age and sex to evaluate the hospitals' performance, the ratio of the observed number of deaths to the expected number for each hospital was calculated. Results : The overall in-hospital mortality rate was 7.0%, ranging from 2.7% to 15.7% depending on the particular hospital. After the severity adjustment, the mortality rates for each hospital showed little difference according to the severity measure. The 5 severity measurement methods varied in their statistical performance. All had a higher c statistic and $R^2$ than the model containing only age and sex. There was a little difference in the relative hospital performance evaluation by the severity measure. Conclusion : These results suggest that judgments regarding a hospital's performance based on severity adjusted mortality can be sensitive to the severity measurement method. Although the 5 severity measures regarding hospital performance concurred, more often than would be expected by chance, the assessment of an individual hospital mortality rates varied by the different severity measurement method used.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.29 no.2 s.53
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• pp.279-294
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• 1996

This study was to evaluate hospital characteristics as composition of manpower and facilities to the death rate of patient; and to earmark the factors affecting the overall hospital mortality rates. The data utilized were derived from survey material conducted by the Korean Hospital Association on 32 tertiary referral hospitals in Korea between 1986 and 1994. The findings are : 1. Those hospitals having the most capacity per bed had little difference to the mortality rates than the others. 2. Those hospitals having the most daily patients per specialist had significantly higher mortality rates than the others, but the number of daily patients per nurse had little effect on the mortality rates. 3. Those hospitals which had a relatively sufficient number of quality assurance activities revealed a lower mortality, and particularly in case where such effort was directed to the clinicians, the outcome was remarkable. We concluded that the major factor affecting the hospital mortality rates seems to be the number of specialists per number of beds, the degree of quality assurance assessment of the clinicians, the quality assurance activities of each hospital as a whole, and the number of daily patient per specialist. According to the findings of this study, the composition and quality of specialist and adequate quality assurance activities seemed to be the essential for the improvement of hospital care. Therefore, in this regard e proper implementation of policy and support is highly recommended. Due to lack of available research material, the personal characteristics of specialists haven't been considered in this study. However, this longitudinal observation of 32 tertiary referral hospitals over a nine year period has significant merit alone.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.218-228
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• 2000

Background : Among 'structure', 'process' and 'outcome' approaches, outcome evaluation is considered as the most direct and best approach to assess the quality of health care providers. Risk-adjustment is an essential method to compare outcome across providers. This study has aims to judge performance of hospitals by severity adjusted mortality rates of coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. Methods : Medical records of 584 patients who got the CABG surgery in 6 general hospitals during 1996 and 1997 were reviewed by trained nurses. The MedisGroups was used to quantify severity of patients. The predictive probability of death was calculated for each patient in the sample from a multivariate logistic regression model including the severity score, age and sex. For evaluation of hospital performance, we calculated ratio of observed number to expected number of deaths and z score [(observed number of deaths - expected number of deaths)/square root of the variance in the number of deaths], and compared observed mortality rate with confidence interval of adjusted mortality rate for each hospital. Results : The overall in-hospital mortality was 7.0%, ranged from 2.7% to 15.7% by hospital. After severity adjustment the mortality by hospital was from 2.7% to 10.7%. One hospital with poor performance was distinctly divided from others with good performance. Conclusion : In conclusion, severity-adjusted mortality rate of CABG surgery might be applied as an indicator for hospital performance evaluation in Korea. But more pilot studies and improvement of methodologies has to be done to use it as quality indicator.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.32-41
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• 1989

We scrutinized the 64 cases of TGA and Taussig-Bing anomaly who underwent Senning and Mustard operations from Jan. 1981 to May 1988. The ratio of male to female was 45; 19, and the age at operation varied from 2 months to 18 years [mean 18.9*32.9 months]. The in-hospital mortality was in 24 cases [37.5%] and the major causes were myocardial failure and congestive heart failure associated with arrhythmias. The risk factors for hospital mortality were complex TGA, prolonged bypass time and high postoperative CVP. In addition, mortality increased during the first year the procedure was used. Late mortality occurred in 6 cases and the major causes was congestive heart failure, and there was not any significant risk factor noted in late mortality. Early arrhythmia developed in 37.5%, all of which were transient and self limited and 7 cases of early mortality were related to the arrhythmias. Late arrhythmias developed in 8 cases, but 7 cases were transient. One case died with junctional tachycardia. Of significance the one case that died late by arrhythmia had a similar junctional tachycardia in the early postoperative period. The survival rate in all cases disregarding initial in-hospital mortality 1YSR 89.8% and 5YSR 84.3%, but because of short duration of follow up this is not significant. We concluded that early hospital mortality could be decreased by operating at an earlier age and by adjusting the appropriate operation method.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.18
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• pp.7909-7911
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• 2014

Gastric cancer is the fourth most common malignancy worldwide. Poor prognosis in gastric cancer is linked with hypoalbuminemia. Previous studies demonstrated relationships between gastric cancer and chronic inflammation. The aim of this study was to assess the prognostic value of preoperative inflammation-based prognostic scores regarding hospital mortality after gastrectomy. Unlike other recent articles on the same topic; we could only verify prognostic value of prognostic nutritional index for in hospital mortality after surgery.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Clinical Toxicology
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.21-27
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• 2019

Purpose: Mortality rate in the health services research field is frequently considered as a proxy for measuring healthcare quality. We compared the mortality rate and hospitalization levels among patients with poisoning. Methods: A population-based study of hospital size and level based on the Korean health insurance and assessment service was conducted to identify the impact of hospital level on patient mortality. Results: We analyzed a total of 16,416 patients, of which 7,607 were from tertiary hospitals, 8,490 were from general hospitals, and 319 were from hospitals. The highest mortality rate of diagnosis regarding poisoning was T60.31 (other herbicides and fungicides, 16%), followed by T60.0 (organophosphate and carbamate insecticides, 12.7%). There was no statistical difference in mortality among hospital levels for gender. Among age groups, tertiary hospitals had lower mortality than general hospitals and hospitals for patients aged more than 70 years (11.9% mortality at tertiary vs 14.2% at general and 23% at hospital; p=0.003, adjusted z score=-6.9), general hospitals had lower mortality than tertiary hospitals and hospitals for patients aged 18 to 29 (0.6% at general vs 2.4% at tertiary and 3.7% at hospital; p=0.01, adjusted z score=-4.3), and hospitals had lower mortality than tertiary hospitals and general hospitals for patients between 50 and 59 years of age (0% at hospital vs 6.4% at general and 8.3% at tertiary; p=0.004). Conclusion: Overall, there was no significant difference between mortality and hospital level among poisoned patients. However, to establish an efficient treatment system for patients with poisoning, further studies will be needed to identify the role of each facility according to hospital level.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.99-104
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• 2010

Objective : We conducted this study to evaluate the clinical impact of early enteral nutrition (EN) on in-hospital mortality and outcome in patients with critical hypertensive intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). Methods : We retrospectively analyzed 123 ICH patients with Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score of 3-12. We divided the subjects into two groups : early EN group (< 48 hours, n = 89) and delayed EN group ($\geq$ 48 hours, n = 34). Body weight, total intake and output, serum albumin, Creactive protein, infectious complications, morbidity at discharge and in-hospital mortality were compared with statistical analysis. Results : The incidence of nosocomial pneumonia and length of intensive care unit stay were significantly lower in the early EN group than in the delayed EN group (p < 0.05). In-hospital mortality was less in the early EN group than in the delayed EN group (10.1% vs. 35.3%, respectively; p = 0.001). By multivariate analysis, early EN [odds ratio (OR) 0.229, 95% CI : 0.066-0.793], nosocomial pneumonia (OR = 5.381, 95% CI : 1.621-17.865) and initial GCS score (OR = 1.482 95% CI : 1.160-1.893) were independent predictors of in-hospital mortality in patients with critical hypertensive ICH. Conclusion : These findings indicate that early EN is an important predictor of outcome in patients with critical hypertensive ICH.