The Challenges of Using ICD codes to Perform a Comparative Analysis between Patients with Penetrating Cardiac Injuries who Underwent Non-Resuscitative Thoracotomy versus Sternotomy.

Comparative morbidity after either sternotomy or non-resuscitative thoracotomy in penetrating cardiac injuries (PCI) is unknown. Retrospective review of adults with PCI who underwent either sternotomy or non-resuscitative thoracotomy using the National Trauma Data Bank 2007-2015. Since there is no unique International Classification of Diseases Procedure Coding System (ICD-PCS) codes assigned for resuscitative vs. non-resuscitative thoracotomy, and both procedures were coded as "thoracotomy", propensity score (PS) methods were applied to avoid inclusion of resuscitative thoracotomy. Despite well PS matching on injury severity score the non-thoracotomy group compared to the sternotomy group had a significantly increased risk of mortality (30 percent vs 8 percent, p<0.0001). The morbidity differed as well-25 percent vs. 12 percent, p=0.0007. The differences in mortality in PCI patients who underwent non-resuscitative thoracotomy vs. sternotomy may be biased by unintentional inclusion of resuscitative thoracotomy. To accurately capture thoracotomy type, separate unique resuscitative and non-resuscitative thoracotomy procedure codes should be created in future revisions of the ICD PCS. Copyright © 2021 by the American Health Information Management Association.

Citation

Nikolay Bugaev, Janis L Breeze, Alyssa M Tutunjian, Horacio M Hojman, Eric J Mahoney, Benjamin P Johnson, Sandra S Arabian. The Challenges of Using ICD codes to Perform a Comparative Analysis between Patients with Penetrating Cardiac Injuries who Underwent Non-Resuscitative Thoracotomy versus Sternotomy. Perspectives in health information management. 2021;18(Winter):1c

Mesh Tags

PMID: 33633513

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