Hijji FY, et al. - Researchers ascertained whether a relationship existed between surgery day and length of stay or hospital costs following minimally invasive transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (MIS TLIF). Findings suggested no association of the specific day on which a MIS TLIF procedure occurs with differences in length of inpatient stay or total hospital costs. The differences in hospital staffing that occurs on the weekend compared with weekdays did not seem to impact the postoperative course after MIS TLIF procedures.

Methods

• Experts identified the length of inpatient stay after orthopedic procedures as a primary cost driver, and previous research focused on ascertaining risk factors for prolonged length of stay.
• They identified the surgery performed later in the week as a predictor of increased length of stay in the arthroplasty literature.
• Nonetheless, for MIS TLIF, no such investigation has been performed.
• Authors retrospectively reviewed a surgical registry of patients undergoing MIS TLIF between 2008 and 2016.
• They grouped the patients based on day of surgery, with groups including early surgery and late surgery.
• For an association with demographics and perioperative variables using the student t test or Χ² analysis, day of surgery group was tested.
• They then tested the day of surgery group for an association with direct hospital costs using multivariate linear regression.

Results

• As per data, in total, 438 patients were analyzed.
• Findings suggested that in total, the early surgery group had 51.8% patients, and 48.2% were in the late surgery group.
• Demographics between groups were not seen to differ.
• With regard to operative time, intraoperative blood loss, length of stay, or discharge day, there were no differences between groups.
• Results demonstrated that finally between early and late surgery groups, there were no differences in total hospital charges (P=0.247).