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Complication rates for some surgical procedures are associated with hospital and surgeon volume. In this study, researchers used a hospital-discharge database for all Pennsylvania hospitals to examine the volume-mortality relation for gastric bypass obesity surgery performed from 1999 through 2003.
Hospital and surgeon volumes were categorized as low, medium, or high (<50, 50–100, or >100 procedures annually). After adjustments for demographic variables and comorbidities, mortality was significantly higher for patients treated at low- and medium-volume hospitals than for patients treated at high-volume hospitals (odds ratios, about 2.0 for both in-hospital and 30-day mortality). Surgeon volume also was associated with mortality (ORs for in-h…