Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Hospital readmission rates remain high in patients with cirrhosis

A majority of patients hospitalized with cirrhosis were readmitted to the hospital due to infection and other liver-related complications within 3 months of being discharged, according to a presention at the 2015 International Liver Congress.

Researchers analyzed data collected from the North American Consortium for the Study of End-stage Liver Disease of 578 patients hospitalized with cirrhosis. Researchers followed patients who were discharged for 3 months to determine any readmissions, transplantation and mortality. Logistic regression analyses were used to determine and analyze reasoning for readmission.

During follow-up, 77 patients died or entered hospice and 20 underwent transplantation. Therefore, 481 patients were included in the final analysis.
Overall, 50% of the patients were readmitted at least once during the follow-up period; 56% had one readmission, 28% had two readmissions and 16% had three or more readmissions.

Forty percent of readmissions were due to infections, 49% due to liver-related complications and 11% for other reasons, according to the research. Readmission rates were similar for patients admitted with infection and those without.

Researchers found that in a large multicenter study of hospitalized cirrhotic patients - 50% of them were re-hospitalized within 3 months of discharge, most often due to problems related to worse liver disease severity and use of antibiotics.

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