Association of low-value operative management with mortality, length of stay and complications

Significant inter-hospital variation in potentially low-value operative management of blunt solid organ injuries (SOI) has been observed but data on the impact on patient outcomes is lacking. Our primary objective was to estimate the association between potentially low-value operative management of blunt SOI and hospital mortality, complications, and length of stay (LOS). A secondary objective was to identify determinants, independent of patients' health status on arrival.

We conducted a retrospective cohort study using the National Trauma Data Bank (2016-2019). We included adults admitted with blunt SOI eligible for nonoperative management (grade I-IV spleen/liver and grade I-III kidney, hemodynamically stable, no blood products within 6 hours). We used propensity scores to generate adjusted odds ratios (OR) of mortality and complications and geometric mean ratios (GMR) of LOS.

We included 62,601 adults, of whom 1,683 (2.7%) had potentially low-value operative management. Adjusted ORs were 1.92 (95% CI 1.25-2.96) for mortality and 2.39 (1.99-2.87) for complications. The adjusted GMR was 1.52 (1.38-1.68) for LOS. Low-value operative management was more frequent in males, White non-Hispanics versus African Americans, Medicaid versus private insurance, and American College of Surgeons (ACS) level II/III and state-designated hospitals versus ACS level I.

In this retrospective cohort study, potentially low-value operative management of SOI was infrequent but was associated with increased mortality, complications, and LOS and was influenced by sex, race and ethnicity and insurance status. Results suggest that interventions designed to reduce low-value operative management may improve patient outcomes.