Factors Associated With 30-Day Readmissions After Transsphenoidal Pituitary Surgery

Determine the association between clinical and demographic factors and 30-day readmission risk after pituitary surgery.

Patients undergoing pituitary surgery between January 2018 and December 2022 were retrospectively reviewed. Cases were extracted from a converged electronic health record that included surgeries performed at the Midwest, Southeast, and Southwest campuses of the same healthcare Enterprise. Variables were compared between patients with 30-day readmission following discharge after pituitary surgery (N = 83) and a randomly sampled patient cohort with pituitary surgery but no readmission within 30 days (N = 174).

In a multivariable regression model looking at the relationship between patient characteristics and readmission risk, every increase in the Medicare Severity Diagnosis Related Group score resulted in a nearly 2.3-fold increase in the risk of readmission (OR = 2.335, 95% CI 1.050, 5.562, P = .045). The presence of arginine vasopressin deficiency increased the odds of readmission by more than 2-fold (OR = 2.784, 95% CI 1.118, 7.124, P = .029). The Midwest site was observed to have a nearly 67% decrease in readmission risk compared to the Southwest site (OR = 0.334, 95% CI 0.134, 0.813, P = .016), with the Southeast site being comparable to the Southwest.

Our study identifies postoperative arginine vasopressin deficiency, greater co-morbidities, and geographic location as risk factors for 30-day readmission after pituitary surgery. Further investigation is required to determine how site-specific care processes can be adopted to lower readmission risk at other locations in the same healthcare enterprise.