High Risk of 30-Day Readmission

Abdominal transplants are now recognized as effective procedures that can be performed to treat both acute and chronic failure of the liver or kidneys. One-year survival rates for patients who receive these surgeries typically fall between 90 and 95%, yet risk of readmission, particularly early readmission, is high (1).

A recent five-year analysis of 12,000 liver transplant recipients found that 38% were readmitted within 30 days and 48% readmitted within 90 days of discharge, leading to $44,000 of additional transplant-related costs per patient (2).

Similar 30-day readmission rates ranging from 18% to 47% were observed in a study of more than 32,000 kidney transplant recipients, and the mean associated cost of rehospitalization was more than $10,000 per patient (3).

citations:
(1) Moreno R & Berenguer M. “Post-liver transplantation medical complication.” Annals of Hep 2006; 5(2): 77-85. (2) Wilson GC et al. “Variation by center and economic burden of readmissions after liver transplantation.” Liver Transpl. 2015; doi: 10.1002/lt.24112. (3) McAdams-DeMarco MA et al. “Early Hospital Readmission After Kidney Transplantation: Patient and Center-Level Associations.” American Journal of Transplantation. 2012; 12: 3283–3288.