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Surgical volume–outcome relationships are well established but have not been studied in patients with interstitial lung disease (ILD) undergoing surgical lung biopsy (SLB). Our study objective was to determine if hospital SLB volume is associated with post-operative mortality in patients with ILD. A cohort study using administrative, population-based data from Ontario, Canada was performed in adults with ILD who underwent a SLB between 2001 and 2014. The association between yearly hospital SLB volume and 30-day post-operative mortality was assessed using multilevel logistic regression modelling. 3057 surgical lung biopsies for ILD were performed during the study period with a median (interquartile range) yearly hospital volume of 73 (34–143) procedures. 30-day mortality was 7.1%, 20.2% and 1.9% in overall, nonelective and elective patients, respectively. Higher yearly hospital SLB volume was associated with lower odds of 30-day post-operative mortality after adjusting for patient characteristics (OR 0.84, 95% CI 0.73–0.97; p=0.02), with the association appearing stronger for nonelective versus elective procedures (OR 0.84, 95% CI 0.69–1.02; p=0.08 versus OR 0.94, 95% CI 0.74–1.18; p=0.57). Higher yearly hospital SLB volume was associated with lower post-operative mortality in patients with ILD, with the association appearing to be mainly driven by nonelective cases. SLB mortality was significantly higher for nonelective cases.
Fisher et al. (Thu,) studied this question.