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Objective We assessed the association between population resection rates, hospital procedure volume and death rates in pancreatic cancer patients in England. Design Patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer were identified from a linked cancer registration and Hospital Episode Statistics dataset. Cox regression analyses were used to assess all-cause mortality according to resection quintile and hospital volume, adjusting for sex, age, deprivation and comorbidity. Results There were 31,973 pancreatic cancer patients studied, 2580 had surgery. Increasing resection rates were associated with lower mortality among all patients (χ 2 (1df) = 176.18, p trend < 0.001), with an unadjusted hazard ratio (HR) of 0.78 95%CI [0.75 to 0.81] in the highest versus the lowest resection quintile. Adjustment changed the estimate slightly (HR 0.82, 95%CI [0.79 to 0.85], (χ 2 (1df) = 99.44, p trend < 0.001)). Among patients that underwent surgery, higher procedure volume was associated with lower mortality (HR = 0.88 95%CI [0.75–1.03] in hospitals carrying out 30+ versus <15 operations a year, shared frailty model, χ 2 (1df) = 1.82, p trend = 0.177). Conclusion Higher population resection rates were associated with lower mortality. The association with hospital procedure volume was less clear possibly due to small number of patients who underwent surgery. Nevertheless these results suggest survival is higher in hospitals that carry out a greater number of operations a year, particularly those doing 30+ operations, supporting the benefit of centralising perioperative expertise in specialist centres. Ensuring people are increasingly diagnosed when they are suitable candidates for surgery, and have access to these specialist centres may lead to an increase in the proportion of patients that undergo surgical resection which could plausibly increase survival of pancreatic cancer patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis was performed to examine whether Medicare claims accurately document underlying rheumatologic diagnoses in total hip replacement (THR) recipients. We obtained data on rheumatologic diagnoses including rheumatoid arthritis (RA), avascular necrosis (AVN), and osteoarthritis (OA) from medical records and from Medicare claims data. To examine the accuracy of claims data we calculated sensitivity and positive predictive value using medical records data as the “gold standard” and assessed bias due to misclassification of claims-based diagnoses. The sensitivities of claims-based diagnoses of RA, AVN, and OA were 0.65, 0.54, and 0.96, respectively; the positive predictive values were all in the 0.86–0.89 range. The sensitivities of RA and AVN varied substantially across hospital volume strata, but in different directions for the two diagnoses. We conclude that inaccuracies in claims coding of diagnoses are frequent, and are potential sources of bias. More studies are needed to examine the magnitude and direction of bias in health outcomes research due to inaccuracy of claims coding for specific diagnoses. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Objective: To examine the association between hospital procedure volume and treatment outcomes following allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (allo-BMT)., Methods: Out of 1, 050 patients who received allo-BMTs between 1998 and 2000 in 21 Korean hospitals, 752 with first allo-BMT and complete data were included in this study. Study subjects were divided into the following three groups according to cumulative hospital experience of all-BMTs during the study period: low (< 30 cases), medium (30-49) and high (> or =50 cases) volume. Patient outcome was defined as early survival at day 100 and one-year survival. Multiple logistic regression analyses were performed to examine the association between hospital experience and survival at day 100 and one year., Results: When the low volume group was defined as the reference group, the adjusted relative risks (RR) of survival at day 100 for the high volume group were 2.46 (95% CI, 1.13-5.36) for all patients, 2.61 (1.04-6.57) for those with leukemia, and 2.20 (0.47-10.32) for those with aplastic anemia. For one-year survival, adjusted RR for the high volume group were 2.52 (1.40-4.51) for all patients, 1.99 (1.01-3.93) for leukemia, and 6.50 (1.57-26.80) for aplastic anemia. None of the RR for the medium volume group was statistically significant. Patient factors showing significant relationship with survival were donor-recipient relation, human leukocyte antigen matching status, time from diagnosis to transplant, and disease stage., Conclusions: The study results suggest that the cumulative experience of hospitals in providing allo-BMT is positively associated with patient survival.