Relationship between Degree of Dependency and Hospitalization Time of Surgical Patients.
José Ander Asenjo-Alarcón, Luz Elita Vergara Cieza
PMID 37071865WHAT IT FOUND
In a surgical service, grade IV patients had the longest average stay at 13.3 days, and most patients were grade II.
Dependency category was related to hospital stay, but grade III average stay was 6.7 days while grade II average stay was 9.9 days.
Key findings
01Postoperative dependency grade was significantly related to hospitalization days (p = 0.038).
02Grade IV patients had a mean hospitalization of 13.3 days, grade II 9.9 days, grade III 6.7 days, and grade I 1.0 day.
0388.1% of patients had grade-II dependency, and the text reports a mean hospital stay of 10 days.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study used existing records, so information could be incomplete or inaccurate. It was done in one regional hospital in Peru, so results may not apply to other settings. The dependency grades were taken from clinical history, not re-measured by the researchers. Grade I and grade IV groups were very small, with 1 and 7 patients in Table 2, so their mean stays are unstable. The paper states 380 patients, but Table 2 lists 308 surgical patients, so the denominator used for dependency is unclear. Grade III mean stay was 6.7 days and grade II mean stay was 9.9 days, so the relationship was not a simple stepwise increase. The design was retrospective and cross-sectional, so it cannot show that dependency caused longer hospitalization.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that a higher dependency grade causes a longer hospital stay. This was a retrospective record review, and grade III patients had a mean stay of 6.7 days while grade II patients had a mean stay of 9.9 days, so the relationship was not a simple stepwise increase.