Abstract:
Introduction
The purpose was to examine the tendency of decreasing lengths of hospital stays after surgical interferences on the basis of 5 frequent surgical disease patterns, which were treated in the years of 1992, 1997 and 2002 at the surgical university clinic Tübingen.
Patients and methods
All in all, in order to issue the present work, all the patient files of those patients with above mentioned surgical interferences out of over 1200 patients from the archives of the surgical university clinic Tübingen were sorted and evaluated. The patient population consisted of a non-preselected group of operated persons. All patient files of those patients were consulted, who were electively operated because of the disease patterns appendectomy, herniotomy, sigma resection, gastrectomy and rectum resection at the university clinic of general surgery in Tübingen during the three years of examination. Additionally, 35 patients, who have been operated because of herniotomy at the ambulatory operation center at the university clinic for general surgery in Tübingen in 2002, were included in the evaluation. After extensive screening of the entire documentation body a total of 1011 assessable patient files remained. The statistic evaluation was executed on the basis of those patient files. Forms, defined at the beginning of the study, were filled out on the basis of the patients files and transferred into a spread-sheet program afterwards. The collection and treatment of the data as well as their statistic evaluation took place under the guidance of the institute of medical biometry at the university of Tübingen.
Results
In the period of 1992 to 2002 significant shortenings of lengths of hospital stays occurred after appendectomy (from7,2±4,0 to 5,7±4,0 days, p=0,001), herniotomy (from 7,1±4,1 to 6,1±3,2 days, p=0,05) and after sigma resection (from 20,5±10,1 to 15,1±5,2 days, p=0,024). After gastrectomy and rectum resection no significant reduction of lengths of hospital stays could be determined during the analyzed period. The hospital stays of older patients (equal to or higher than 75 years) were significantly longer after appendectomy (12,7±6,8 versus 6,3±3,9 days, p=0,006) and herniotomy (9,4±5,7 versus 5,9±3,3 days, p < 0,0001) than those of younger patients. The elderly’s hospital stays after sigma resection (24,3±19,5 versus 16,4±6,3 days, p=0,141), gastrectomy (19,4±6,3 versus 21,2±10,9 days, p=0,427) and after rectum resection (18,3±6,1 versus 22,2±10,0 days, p=0,122) showed no significant difference to that of younger patients. Adipose patients (BMI equal to or higher than 25 kg/m²) had significant longer lengths of hospital stays after appendectomy (7,7±5,2 versus 5,9±3,4 days, p=0,002). The lengths of hospital stays after the other examined operations were not affected by the patient’s BMI. Patients with risk factors (cardial, renal, pulmonary, hepatic, abuse of nicotine/ alcohol) had a significant longer length of hospital stay after herniotomy (7,2±4,2 versus 5,6±3,4 days, p < 0,0001). The lengths of hospital stays after the remaining four examined operations were not affected by risk factors. Patients with a private health insurance stayed significantly longer in hospital after appendectomy (7,8±4,9 versus 6,2±3,9 days, p=0,01) or after herniotomy (7,3±3,5 versus 5,9±4,0 days, p=0,001) than patients under publicly funded healthcare. After gastrectomy and sigma resection there were no significant differences in the lengths of hospital stays between both groups of insured patients. Those under publicly funded healthcare showed significantly longer lengths of hospital stays after rectum resection than privately-insured (23,0±10,2 versus 18,7±7,5 days, p=0,03). Patients with postoperative complications after appendectomy (9,8±5,7 versus 5,2±2,1 days, p < 0,0001), herniotomy (11,4±5,3 versus 5,9±3,4 days, p < 0,0001), or after rectum resection (24,5±10,7 versus 18,1±6,6 days, p=0,001) stayed significantly longer in hospital than patients without complications. After gastrectomy and after sigma resection, a tendency of longer lengths of hospital stays could be shown.
Conclusions
Overall, a clear tendency of shorter lengths of hospital stays could be noticed. However, this is mostly related to smaller procedures, while for larger operations of malignant tumors the lengths of hospital stays obviously cannot be reduced so easily. After rectum resection, even increasing lengths of hospital stays could be observed recently. However, the reason for this lies in the clearly increasing number of patients with risk factors. Savings potentials are obviously utilized within the range of the lengths of hospital stays. Partly, this also concerned the preoperative lengths of hospital stays, which could be significantly reduced prior to herniotomy and prior to rectum resection.