Background: While literature has focused on the impact of bleeding beginning outside the hospital setting among patients with atrial fibrillation (AF), there is little information regarding bleeding that first occurs within a hospital setting. This study was performed to determine the association between hospital-associated bleeding in patients admitted for AF on outcomes of length of stay (LOS) and total hospitalization cost.
Methods and results: The Premier research database was queried to identify adult inpatients discharged between 2008-2011 having a primary diagnosis code for AF where a bleeding diagnosis code was not present on admission. Regression was used to adjust for baseline differences in patients to estimate outcomes comparing patients with and without a hospital-associated bleed. There were 143,287 patients that met the study criteria. There were 2991 (2.1%) patients identified with a hospital associated bleed. After adjustment for covariates, the mean estimated LOS was significantly greater in the bleed group, at 6.0 days (95% CI = 5.8-6.1) vs the no bleed group at 3.3 days (95% CI = 3.3-3.3) (p < 0.0001). Similarly, the adjusted mean estimated total hospitalization cost was also significantly greater in the bleed group, $12,069 (95% CI = $11,779-$12,366) vs $6561 (95% CI = $6538-$6583) in the no bleed group (p < 0.0001).
Conclusions: After adjustments for baseline differences the data show that the 2.1% (n = 2991) of patients with hospital associated bleeding accounted for an estimated additional 8106 hospitalization days and $16.4 million dollars in cost over the study period compared to non-bleeders.
Keywords: Hospital associated bleed; Length of stay; Non-valvular atrial fibrillation; Total hospitalization cost.