부산대학교 도서관

Introduction: Operator and hospital procedure volumes are associated with outcomes in many cardiac procedures.Objective: To determine the association between hospital/physician procedural volume and safety/success for atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation in the current era.Methods: Procedures reported to the NCDR AFib Registry between 7/2019 to 6/2022 were analyzed. Physician and hospital procedural volumes were annualized and stratified into quartiles (Q) to compare procedural success and major adverse events (MAE). Three level hierarchical (patient, hospital and physician) generalized linear models were used to assess the adjusted relationship between procedural volume and likelihood of acute outcomes.Results: A total of 70,296 first time AF ablation patientsʼ at 186 US hospitals were studied. Mean age was 66.1 ± 10.3 years. 36% were women; mean CHA2DS2-VASc score was 2.7±1.6, and 57.4% were of paroxysmal AF. The median annual procedural volumes for hospitals and physicians were 230 and 66 respectively. Acute procedural success was 98.5% and the MAE rate was 1.0%. With Q4 (highest) hospital procedural volume as a reference, the adjusted likelihood of procedural success was significantly less among Q1 (OR: 0.44, CI: 0.3-0.7), Q2 (OR:0.50, CI:0.3-0.8) and Q3 (OR:0.60,CI:0.4-0.9). Similarly, for physician volume, the adjusted likelihood of success was less among Q1 (OR: 0.38,CI: 0.3-0.5), Q2 (OR: 0.51,CI: 0.4-0.7) and Q3 (OR:0.55,CI:0.4-0.7). With regards to MAE, compared to Q4, there was an inverse relationship to procedural volume for hospitals in Q1 (OR: 1.78, CI:1.3-2.5) but not in Q2 (OR: 1.06, CI 0.8-1.5) or Q3 (OR: 1.19, CI: 0.9-1.6) and for physicians in Q1 (OR: 1.93, CI 1.4-2.6) and Q2 (OR:1.49, CI: 1.1-2.0) but not in Q3 (OR: 1.22, CI: 0.9-1.6)(figure).Conclusions: In this national cohort of first time AF ablations, hospital and physician procedural volume were directly related to acute procedural success and inversely related to the rate of MAE.