Effects of preoperative oral management by dentists on postoperative outcomes following esophagectomy: Multilevel propensity score matching and weighting analyses using the Japanese inpatient database.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of preoperative oral management (POM) by dentists on the incidence of postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs), length of hospital stay, medical costs, and days of antibiotics administration following both open and thoracoscopic esophagectomy.Dental plaque is an established risk factor for postoperative pneumonia, which could be reduced by POM. However, few clinical guidelines for cancer treatment, including those for esophageal cancer, recommend POM as routine perioperative care.We extracted data of esophagectomy cases from the Japanese Diagnosis Procedure Combination database. We subsequently conducted propensity score (PS) analyses for multilevel data, including matching, inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW), and standardized mortality ratio weighting (SMRW), to estimate the effect of POM by dentists on the outcomes of esophagectomy.We analyzed 3412 esophagectomy cases of which 812 were open, and 2600 were thoracoscopic surgery. In IPTW analysis to estimate the average treatment effect, the risk difference of postoperative aspiration pneumonia ranged from -2.49% to -2.02% between the POM and control groups of both open and thoracoscopic esophagectomy cases. IPTW analyses indicated that the total medical costs of thoracoscopic esophagectomy were reduced by 221,200 to 253,100 Japanese Yen (equivalent to about $2000-$2200). In PS matching and SMRW analyses to estimate average treatment effect on treated, there was no difference in outcomes between the POM and control groups.Our results suggested that in patients undergoing open or thoracoscopic esophagectomy, POM by dentists prevented the occurrence of postoperative aspiration pneumonia. It could also reduce the total medical costs of thoracoscopic esophagectomy. Thus, POM by dentists can be considered as a routine perioperative care for all patients undergoing esophagectomy, regardless of the expected risk for PPC.