Length of stay and total hospital charges of clipping versus coiling for ruptured and unruptured adult cerebral aneurysms in the Nationwide Inpatient Sample database 2002 to 2006.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: We have previously reported the difference in length of stay and hospital charges for patients with cerebral aneurysms treated with either clipping or coiling at our institution. We now report an analysis of the same comparison at a national level conducted using the Nationwide Inpatient Sample database.

METHODS: We obtained the Nationwide Inpatient Sample from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research. The Nationwide Inpatient Sample is the largest all-payer inpatient care database in the US and represents approximately 20% of all inpatient admissions to US nonfederal hospitals. Hospitalizations for clipping or coiling of ruptured and unruptured cerebral aneurysms from 2002 to 2006 were identified by cross-matching International Classification of Diseases-9 codes for diagnoses of subarachnoid hemorrhage (430) or unruptured cerebral aneurysm (437.3) with procedure codes for clipping (39.51) or coiling (39.79, 39.72, or 39.52) of cerebral aneurysms. Length of hospital stay and total hospital charges for clipping and coiling were compared using linear mixed models adjusted for the following patient and hospital-specific factors: gender, age, race/ethnicity, admission source and type, median income level in patient's postal code of residence, payer for care, comorbidities, and hospital cerebral aneurysm case volume, bed size, teaching status, rural/urban location, and geographic region.

RESULTS: There were 9635 hospitalizations for ruptured aneurysm treatments (6019 clipping, 3616 coiling) and 9399 hospitalizations for unruptured aneurysm treatments (4700 clipping, 4699 coiling). For ruptured aneurysm patients, after adjusting for the effects of patient-specific and hospital-specific factors, clipping compared to coiling was associated with significantly longer length of stay (P<0.0001) and significantly higher total hospital charges (P<0.0001). For unruptured aneurysm patients, clipping compared to coiling was associated with significantly longer length of stay (P<0.0001) and significantly higher total hospital charges (P<0.0001). After adjusting for the effects of hospital-level and patient-level characteristics, clipping as compared to coiling was associated with an average of 1.2-times more days in hospitalization for ruptured patients and was associated with an average of 1.8-times more days in hospitalization for unruptured patients. On average, clipping resulted in $15,325 more in total charge for ruptured patients and resulted in $11,263 more in total charge for unruptured patients after considering all relevant hospital and patient characteristics.

CONCLUSIONS: The results of this nationwide analysis differed from the findings of our single institution study. Clipping compared to coiling was associated with significantly longer lengths of stay and significantly higher total hospital charges for both ruptured and unruptured aneurysm patients.