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High hospital volume has been linked to superior patient outcomes for a variety of surgical procedures. To determine whether the benefits of high hospital volumes extend to acute pancreatitis (AP) treatment, researchers examined the records of >400,000 AP patients in the Nationwide Inpatient Sample and compared outcomes between patients in high-volume (HV) and low-volume (LV) hospitals. HV hospitals — those with ≥118 AP admissions per year (the upper third in volume) — tended to be large, urban, teaching hospitals. Compared with LV hospitals (<118 AP admissions per year), HV hospitals were more likely to care for black patients, patients in higher income brackets, and patients with three or more comorbidities.
In an unmatched cohort of 277,0…