Reported rates of clostridium difficile following radical cystectomy in national datasets compared to individual...

Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is an important cause of hospital acquired morbidity with implications for quality of care. Radical cystectomy is a surgical procedure associated with high rates of morbidity one of which is a high rate of CDI. The rate of CDI among patients undergoing radical cystectomy may be estimated based on the reports from single institutions or by querying national databases. This study aims to compare rates of CDI reported in single institution series with rates obtained from national datasets.

A search was conducted on PubMed and Google Scholar using the terms "cystectomy+difficile" and "cystectomy+complication." Three hundred fifty articles were screened and 46 met criteria for inclusion based on the presence of specific rates of C. difficile following radical cystectomy. In the case of articles reporting on the same database, only the article with a larger sample size was included in the pooled analysis. One study reviewing a single institution was excluded from pooled analysis because it did not relate the rate of CDI specifically with cystectomy. Multi-institutional studies were not included in pooled analysis.

After exclusion of repeated data and multi-institutional studies, the pooled analysis consisted of 39 studies. Thirty five articles reported rates of CDI in single institutions and 4 articles reported rates found in national databases. Studies focusing on a single institution reported an average 5.02% (standard deviation = 4.88) incidence of CDI, compared to an average of 1.92% (standard deviation = 0.22) in databases. The rate of CDI found by totaling patients and incidence of infection found that databases show a rate of 1.95%, while institutions show a rate of 4.11% (P < 0.0000001).

The rate of CDI following radical cystectomy may be underestimated in national databases. This has implications for the development of health policy and quality measures based on the rate of CDI.