Practice makes perfect: relationship between hospital procedure volume and permanent pacemaker implantation after...

Paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT) ablation can result in injury to the atrioventricular (AV) node causing complete heart block requiring permanent pacemaker (PPM) implantation. Few studies have examined the impact of hospital PSVT ablation volume and PPM implantation rates post ablation.

We included adult patients from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) database, from 1998 to 2011, using ICD-9 diagnoses codes 427.0 and 427.89 for PSVT and ICD-9 procedure code 37.34 for ablation. Patients with concomitant arrhythmias, prior pacemaker/defibrillator implants, or pre-existing sinus node dysfunction were excluded. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to identify predictors of PPM implantation.

There were 119,938 PSVT ablations from 1998 to 2011 with a mean age of 54.6 ± 17.5 years and 64.1% females. The overall PPM implantation rate was 3.2%. PPM implantation rates in the first (1-14 ablations/year), second (15-32 ablations/year), and third (> 32/ablations/year) tertiles of annual PSVT ablation volume were respectively 4.4, 3.3, and 1.9% (p < 0.001). Increasing age, female gender, bifascicular, or trifascicular block and teaching hospital status were independent predictors of PPM implantation. The adjusted odds ratio for PPM implantation in hospitals performing > 32 PSVT ablations/year compared to hospitals performing ≤ 14 PSVT ablations/year was 0.54 (95% confidence interval 0.3-0.9, p = 0.026).

PPM implantation rates are significantly lower in hospitals performing > 32 PSVT ablations/year, indicating that hospital experience is an important determinant of outcomes after PSVT ablation.