Abstract
Introduction: Atrial fibrillation as the most common arrhythmia worldwide results in a significantly elevated risk of cardioembolic stroke. Left atrial appendage (LAA) closure has been advocated and supported by randomized clinical trials as an alternative treatment in patients with atrial fibrillation who have contraindications for anticoagulation. The safety of this procedure in patients who are considered frail remains unknown since they have been underrepresented in most clinical studies. Our study aims to investigate the impact of frailty on hospital-related outcomes in patients undergoing elective LAA closure. Methods: We reviewed the National Inpatient Sample database from January 2016 to December 2017 to identify patients that underwent elective percutaneous LAA closure using the ICD-10 code 02L73DK for the procedure. Frailty was defined using the Johns Hopkins Adjusted Clinical Groups (ACG) frailty-defining diagnoses indicator. An individual is considered frail if they present >=1 diagnosis within the indicator. The outcomes include in-hospital mortality, hemorrhage requiring blood transfusion, respiratory failure, sepsis, length of stay, and total hospitalization cost. Multivariate logistic or linear regression was adopted to determine the impact of frailty on the outcomes while reducing the effect of possible confounding baseline characteristics. Results: From the period of January 2016 to December 2017, a total of 14795 patients underwent elective LAA closure. Of those patients, 830 were determined to meet the criteria for frailty, while 13965 were considered non-frail. The frail group is older than the non-frail group with a mean age of 78.77 years old than 75.53 years old. Frailty was associated with an increased risk of hemorrhage requiring transfusion (odds ratio 2.82, p=0.030) and a longer length of stay (2.10 vs 1.30 days, p=0.003). The frail group appears to have higher hospitalization costs, but the result was not statistically significant ($122668.2 vs $114295.3, p=0.091). Conclusions: The presence of frailty was associated with an increased risk of hemorrhage requiring transfusion and a longer length of hospital stay after elective left atrial appendage closure.
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