Interhospital Variation in Admissions Managed With Critical Care Therapies or Invasive Hemodynamic Monitoring in Tertiary Cardiac Intensive Care Units: An Analysis From the Critical Care Cardiology Trials Network Registry.

Background: Wide interhospital variations exist in cardiovascular intensive care unit (CICU) admission practices and the use of critical care restricted therapies (CCRx), but little is known about the differences in patient acuity, CCRx utilization, and the associated outcomes within tertiary centers.
Methods: The Critical Care Cardiology Trials Network is a multicenter registry of tertiary and academic CICUs in the United States and Canada that captured consecutive admissions in 2-month periods between 2017 and 2022. This analysis included 17 843 admissions across 34 sites and compared interhospital tertiles of CCRx (eg, mechanical ventilation, mechanical circulatory support, continuous renal replacement therapy) utilization and its adjusted association with in-hospital survival using logistic regression. The Pratt index was used to quantify patient-related and institutional factors associated with CCRx variability.
Results: The median age of the study population was 66 (56-77) years and 37% were female. CCRx was provided to 62.2% (interhospital range of 21.3%-87.1%) of CICU patients. Admissions to CICUs with the highest tertile of CCRx utilization had a greater burden of comorbidities, had more diagnoses of ST-elevation myocardial infarction, cardiac arrest, or cardiogenic shock, and had higher Sequential Organ Failure Assessment scores. The unadjusted in-hospital mortality (median, 12.7%) was 9.6%, 11.1%, and 18.7% in low, intermediate, and high CCRx tertiles, respectively. No clinically meaningful differences in adjusted mortality were observed across tertiles when admissions were stratified by the provision of CCRx. Baseline patient-level variables and institutional differences accounted for 80% and 5.3% of the observed CCRx variability, respectively.
Conclusions: In a large registry of tertiary and academic CICUs, there was a >4-fold interhospital variation in the provision of CCRx that was primarily driven by differences in patient acuity compared with institutional differences. No differences were observed in adjusted mortality between low, intermediate, and high CCRx utilization sites.
Competing Interests: Disclosures Dr Barnett reports clinical trial enrollment for Acceleron, Merck, Merck Shape & Dohme, and Aerovate Therapeutics. Dr Bohula, Dr Morrow, and J. Guo are members of the TIMI study group, which has received institutional research grant support through Brigham and Women’s Hospital from Abbott, Abiomed, Amgen, Anthos Therapeutics, ARCA Biopharma, Inc, AstraZeneca, Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, Inc, Daiichi Sankyo, Eisai, Intarcia, Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc, Janssen Research and Development, LLC, MedImmune, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Quark Pharmaceuticals, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc, Roche, Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, Inc, Softcell Medical Limited, The Medicines Company, and Zora Biosciences. Dr Morrow has received consulting fees from Abbott Laboratories, ARCA Biopharma, InCarda, Inflammatix, Merck, Novartis, and Roche Diagnostics. Dr Daniels reports consulting income from Roche Diagnostics and QuidelOrtho serves on clinical end point adjudication committees for Abbottand Applied Therapeutics. Dr Prasad reports advisory board for Abiomed and NIH R01 grant. Dr Teuteberg reports consulting with Abbott, Abiomed advisory board, CareDx advisory board and speaking fees, Cytokinetics speaking fees, Medtronic advisory board, speaking and consulting fees, Paragonix speaking fees, and Takeda advisory board. The other authors report no conflicts.