The Status of Pediatric Extracorporeal Life Support According to the National Inpatient Sample.

Abstract

* Abbreviations: ECLS — : extracorporeal life support ECMO — : extracorporeal membrane oxygenation ELSO — : Extracorporeal Life Support Organization NIS — : National Inpatient Sample In the current issue of Pediatrics , Sanaiha et al1 report trends in mortality and cost for extracorporeal life support (ECLS) in the United States from 2008 to 2015 using the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) database. The NIS began in 1988 and obtains data through hospital discharge records from all hospitals participating in the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project. The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project in turn relies on data collected by participating states through the State Inpatient Databases. The data collected by each state are then aggregated to create a national database from which retrospective research can be performed. There are many benefits to the use of large-scale administrative databases such as the NIS. But there are also significant limitations inherent to each database that need to be recognized to interpret data correctly. For the NIS, some of these limitations include a lack of granularity, a delay in data updates (the current study ends in 2015, but the data are being presented years later), and the inability to perform hospital-level analyses after 2011.2–4 … Address correspondence to Andrea H. Gillespie, MD, Oregon Health and Science University, 3181 SW Sam Jackson Park Rd, Portland, OR 97239-3098. E-mail: gillespa{at}ohsu.edu