Frequency of loco-regional complications and their IMPACT on hospitalization outcomes in patients with pancreatic cancer.

Abstract

e16278 Background: Despite advances in medicine, pancreatic cancer continues to have a grim prognosis. It is not well studied if certain loco-regional complications pose higher prognostic risk than others and thus may be useful in estimating longevity and targeting care. Methods: National Inpatient Sample (NIS) was queried to identify adult patients with underlying pancreatic cancer between 2016-2018. Relative frequency and diagnosis of locoregional complications as principal diagnosis in these patients were identified and top 5 loco-regional complications were studied and compared for all-cause mortality, mean length of stay (LOS), mean total hospital charges (THC). Statistics were performed using the t-test, univariate and multinomial logistic regression. Results: There were 112,230 adult hospitalizations for pancreatic cancer. Top 5 loco-regional complications were cancer pain (8.6%), upper GI bleeding (UGIB) (8.4%), gastroduodenal obstruction (5.7%), failure to thrive (5%) and acute liver failure (2.8%). Mortality rate of all pancreatic cancer admissions was 7% and all loco-regional complications studied were associated with significant increased odds of mortality, the highest in patients with acute liver failure (AOR- 5.33, p < 0.001). All Loco-regional complications studied were associated with statistically significant increased LOS with the highest among patients admitted with UGIB (p < 0.001). UGIB was also associated with the highest THC whiles cancer pain admissions had a lower charge (p < 0.001). Conclusions: Among Loco-regional complications in pancreatic cancer that were studied, cancer associated pain was the most frequent while acute liver failure was the most fatal (5x higher odds of mortality). UGIB was associated with the longest hospital LOS (6 more days) and the highest THC (over $100,000 extra per admission) whereas cancer associated pain was associated with the shortest length of stay and lowest total charge. Further efforts are needed to improve outpatient pain management in pancreatic cancer patients to prevent these admissions.[Table: see text]