Abstract No. 347 - Safety of same day discharge after renal tumor thermal ablation

Abstract

Purpose Overnight hospital admission of patients after percutaneous renal ablation remains standard practice for many institutions. The aim of this study is to evaluate the safety of same day discharge of patients who undergo percutaneous CT-guided radiofrequency ablation (RFA) and cryoablation of renal tumors. Materials and Methods An IRB approved retrospective analysis was conducted of patients with renal tumors treated with percutaneous CT-guided RFA and cryoablation between January 2004 and June 2012. Ablation method, tumor size, complications and rates of hospital admissions were analyzed. Results A total of 153 procedures were performed on 134 patients including 82 cryoablations and 71 radiofrequency ablations. All patients were planned to be discharged the same day as their procedure following a standard 4 hour observation period. Overall, five of 153 encounters (3.3%) resulted in patients being admitted overnight. All five admissions occurred because of a complication detected during the first 4 hours after the procedure. Hospital admission was required in 4/71 (5.6%) RFA encounters and in 1/82 (1.2%) cryoablation encounters (p=0.28). Admission was required because of pneumothorax (n=2, one each group) and bleeding (n=3, all in the RFA group). There were no procedure related readmissions after same day discharge however 2/71 (2.8%) RFA encounters had perinephric hematomas detected after discharge but the patients did not require admission. There was no significant difference in the mean tumor size between the RFA (3.1cm) and cryoablation (3.3cm) groups (p=0.4). Conclusion Planned same day discharge after renal cryoablation and RFA is safe with no significant difference detected between the two procedures. Complications requiring admission are low and were detected in the immediate post-procedure observation period.