Physiological Complexity of Pediatric Surgery Between Types of Hospitals

The Hospital for Sick Children

Status: Completed

Conditions: Health Services

Treatments: Procedure: Pediatric surgical procedures

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03144544

1000053805

Details and patient eligibility

About

When considered from a provincial perspective, quantification of surgical procedures undertaken by different hospitals and healthcare networks is necessary for informing resource allocation and modelling of healthcare services. The investigators hypothesized that i) non-physiologically complex surgical procedures would account for most (>1/2) of pediatric surgical procedures performed at both pediatric specialist hospitals and the other hospitals performing pediatric surgery, ii) surgical discharges for non-physiologically complex surgical procedures would account for most (>1/2) in-hospital bed nights among pediatric surgical admissions at both pediatric specialist hospitals and the other hospitals performing pediatric surgery, and iii) the relative distributions of non-physiologically complex surgical procedures, but not physiologically complex procedures, would be at least moderately similar between pediatric specialist hospitals and the other hospitals performing pediatric surgery. To test these 3 hypotheses, the specific objectives of this study were to estimate i) the proportion (primary outcome) of non-physiologically complex pediatric surgical procedures, and ii) the similarity and diversity (secondary outcomes) of non-physiologically and physiologically complex surgical procedures between the pediatric specialist hospitals and the other hospitals performing pediatric surgery in Ontario, Canada.

Enrollment: 830,830 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 28 days to 17 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• surgical procedures for individuals aged greater than 27 days and less than 18 years

Exclusion criteria

• newborns (0 to 27 days of age)
• records lacking a patient identifier or age
• non-surgical healthcare interventions

Trial design

830,830 participants in 2 patient groups

Pediatric specialist hospitals

Description:

Free-standing hospitals providing tertiary pediatric referral services and performing pediatric surgical procedures

Treatment:

Procedure: Pediatric surgical procedures

Non-pediatric specialist hospitals

Description:

Other hospitals performing pediatric surgical procedures

Treatment:

Procedure: Pediatric surgical procedures