Short length of stay after elective transfemoral transcatheter aortic valve replacement is not associated with increased early or late readmission risk

Background — Elderly patients undergoing transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) are at risk of hospital readmission postprocedure. It is not known whether the index hospital length of stay and, specifically, early discharge post‐TAVR is associated with an increased risk of readmission. We hypothesized a nonlinear relationship whereby both short and long lengths of stay were associated with increased readmission risk.

Methods and Results — We performed a retrospective multicenter cohort analysis of patients undergoing elective transfemoral TAVR and surviving to discharge between January 2007 and March 2014. The exposure variable was hospital length of stay measured from the procedure date to the date of discharge and modeled as a continuous variable in a multivariable cause‐specific Cox regression. Main outcome measures were 30‐day and 1‐year all‐cause readmissions. The study population consisted of 709 patients with a median length of stay of 6 days (interquartile range, 4–8). At 30‐days and 1‐year, 13.5% and 44.0% of patients were readmitted, respectively. Although post‐TAVR length of stay was not associated with 30‐day all‐cause readmissions (P=0.925), there existed a significant association with 1‐year readmission (P=0.010) after adjustment for baseline clinical variables. The association between post‐TAVR length of stay and 1‐year readmission was linear (P=0.549 for nonlinearity) with no evidence supporting an increased readmission risk for shorter length of stays.

Conclusions — Among elderly survivors of elective transfemoral TAVR, a short postprocedural length of stay was not associated with an increased risk readmission within 30 days or 1 year. However, the risk of 1‐year readmission increased with longer post‐TAVR lengths of stay.