BACKGROUND Efforts to maximize kidney transplantation are tempered by concern for the live donor's safety. Case series and center surveys exist, but national aggregate data are lacking. We sought to determine predictors of early clinical and economic outcomes following living donor nephrectomy. DESIGN A retrospective cross-sectional analysis using 1999-2005 discharge data from the Healthcare ...

PURPOSE Recognizing the emergence of laparoscopy as a standard of care for surgical treatment in many patients with organ confined renal cell carcinoma, we explored the diffusion of this technology by examining temporal trends in the nationwide use of laparoscopic total and partial nephrectomy in patients with renal cell carcinoma. MATERIALS AND METHODS Data from the Healthcare Cost and Utili...

Facelifts are consistently one of the most common aesthetic operations performed by plastic surgeons in the United States (US). In 2013, 133,320 procedures were recorded, a rise of 6% compared with the previous year, making facelift the fifth most commonly performed cosmetic procedure. Further, rhytidectomy has been found to be safe in a wider, older range of patients, making it more popular wi...

Parathyroidectomy is the only curative therapy for patients with primary hyperparathyroidism. However, the incidence, correlates and consequences of parathyroidectomy for primary hyperparathyroidism across the entire US population are unknown. We evaluated temporal trends in rates of inpatient parathyroidectomy for primary hyperparathyroidism, and associated in-hospital mortality, length of sta...

IMPORTANCE The association between hospital volume and inpatient mortality for severe sepsis is unclear. OBJECTIVE To assess the effect of severe sepsis case volume and inpatient mortality. DESIGN SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS Retrospective cohort study from 646,988 patient discharges with severe sepsis from 3,487 hospitals in the Nationwide Inpatient Sample from 2002 to 2011. EXPOSURES The ex...

BACKGROUND Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a multisystem disease associated with significant morbidity and increased mortality. The prevalence of different gastrointestinal (GI) manifestations has been investigated in multiple, but mainly small, retrospective studies. In this study, we investigated the prevalence and risk for a broad spectrum of GI disorders and malignancies in a large sample of in...

BACKGROUND The Joint Commission began certifying primary stroke centers (PSCs) in December 2003 and provides a standardized definition of stroke center care. It is unknown if PSCs outperform noncertified hospitals. We hypothesized that PSCs would use more recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rt-PA) for ischemic stroke than would non-PSCs. METHODS AND RESULTS Data were obtained from the N...

OBJECTIVE Our objective was to provide a national estimate across all payers of the distribution and cost of selected chronic conditions for hospitalized adults in 2009, stratified by demographic characteristics. ANALYSIS We analyzed the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS), the largest all-payer inpatient database in the United States. Use, cost, and mortality estimates across payer, age, sex, ...