Zhang, Yaqi

Introduction: Percutaneous left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) has been rapidly evolving since FDA’s approval in 2015, and has become more of a same-day-discharge procedure. Cancer patients who underwent LAAO are known to have more inpatient complications and longer hospital stay. Readmission data, however, were rarely studied in this patient population. Hypothesis: Readmission burden is relatively high in cancer patients who received LAAO. Methods: Data were derived from the National Readmission Database from 2016 to 2019. Patients with primary diagnosis of atrial fibrillation or flutter admitted for percutaneous LAAO (ICD-10 code 02L73DK) were grouped by cancer as a secondary diagnosis. We assessed inpatient mortality, length of stay, total charges and procedure complications from index hospitalization. We also compared readmission rate and most common readmission reasons. Stata SE 17.0 was used for data analysis. Results: There were 49882 index hospitalizations for LAAO, among which 1545 (3.1%) patients had a secondary diagnosis of cancer. From index hospitalizations, Patients with cancer had higher inpatient mortality (0.65% vs 0.14%, p=0.007), longer length of stay (1.54±0.08 vs 1.31±0.01, p<0.001) and higher total charges (120.25±3.44 vs 117.29±2.40, p<0.001). There was no statistical significance of 30-day readmission rate between patients with cancer and patients without cancer (10.0% vs 9.1%, p=0.34). The most common readmission reason in cancer patients was gastrointestinal bleeding. Conclusions: Readmission utilization is comparable between patients with cancer and patients without cancer who underwent LAAO.