"Heeding Risks May Prevent Hospital Readmissions After Thyroid Surgery" - Lynne K. Schneider
The number of thyroidectomy procedures increased from nearly 66,900 to nearly 93,000 between 1996 and 2006, and the number has continued to rise. Currently, 30-day readmission rates are the metric most frequently used to evaluate health care costs and quality of care. Researchers undertook a study to assess the rate of readmission of patients who had had a thyroidectomy, according to an article published in Surgery. Based on the data a total of 990 patients, or 4.4 percent of the patients undergoing a thyroid surgical procedure, were readmitted within 30 days of their surgery. More than half of the readmissions occurred within the first week after discharge, with 24.6 percent occurring within the first two days of returning home. Raymond Chai, MD, assistant professor of otolaryngology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai said, “The rate of readmissions observed in this study was noticeably higher than the rates that have been reported in previous albeit it smaller studies, 3-6which were predominantly < 2 percent. These studies reflected readmission rates after thyroidectomy procedures ranging from 0.1 percent to 2.6 percent.” Dr. Chai added, “This is likely related to the inherent problems associated with large database studies, such as this one —many of the readmissions for ‘thyroid cancer’ may have actually been due to scheduled thyroid surgeries and not actual readmissions.”
— Raymond L. Chai, MD, Assistant Professor, Otolaryngology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai