Risk-scoring system predicting need for hospital-specific interventional care after peroral endoscopic myotomy

Objectives: Early identification of patients needing hospital-specific interventional care (HIC) following endoscopic treatment is valuable for optimizing postoperative hospital stays. We aimed to develop and validate a risk-scoring system for predicting HIC in patients who underwent peroral endoscopic myotomy (POEM).

Methods: This study included patients with esophageal motility disorders who underwent POEM at our hospital between April 2015 and March 2023. HIC was defined as any of the following situations: fasting for gastrointestinal rest to manage adverse events (AEs); intravenous administration of medications such as antibiotics and blood transfusion; endoscopic, radiologic, and surgical interventions; intensive care unit management; or other life-threatening events. A risk-scoring system for predicting HIC after postoperative day (POD) 1 was developed using multivariable logistic regression and was internally validated using bootstrapping and decision curve analysis.

Results: Of the 589 patients, 50 (8.5%) experienced HIC after POD1. Risk scores were assigned for four factors as follows: age (0 points for <70 years, 1 point for 70-79 years, 2 points for ≥80 years), preoperative prognostic nutritional index (0 points for >45, 1 point for 40-45, 4 points for <40), postoperative surgical site AEs on second-look endoscopy (7 points), and postoperative pneumonia on chest radiography (6 points). The discriminative ability (concordance statistics, 0.85; 95% confidence interval, 0.78-0.91) and calibration (slope 1.00; 0.74-1.28) were satisfactory. The decision curve analysis demonstrated its clinical usefulness.

Conclusion: This risk-scoring system can predict the HIC after POD1 and provide useful information for determining discharge.