Characterizing endovascular aortic intervention outcomes for nonruptured aortic aneurysms by physician specialty

Background: Evaluate patient outcomes after endovascular aortic interventions performed for nonruptured aortic aneurysms by physician specialties. Methods: Endovascular aortic repair (EVAR), fenestrated or branched repair (F-BEVAR), and thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR) procedures were obtained from the Illinois Hospital Association Comparative Health Care and Hospital Data Reporting Services database from 2016 to 2019. Logistic and Poisson regression were used to determine outcomes by patient, physician, and hospital characteristics. Results: A total of 4,935 procedures, 3,666 (74.3%) EVAR, 567 (11.5%) F-BEVAR, and 702 (14.2%) TEVAR were performed by vascular surgeons, interventional radiologists, interventional cardiologists, and cardiac surgeons. Vascular surgeons performed interventions equally between hospital types while interventional radiologists primarily performed interventions in teaching hospitals (68.1%) and interventional cardiologists and cardiac surgeons typically performed interventions in community hospitals (91.8% and 82.1%, respectively; P < .001). No differences in inpatient mortality were noted between specialties. Patients treated by interventional radiologists had increased odds of staying in the hospital ≥8 days (odd ration [OR] 1.95, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.19–3.19) and patients treated by interventional cardiologists had lower odds of being admitted to the intensive care unit [ICU] (OR 0.42, 95% CI 0.18–0.95). Conclusion: Differences in practice patterns among specialties performing endovascular aortic aneurysm repair for nonruptured aneurysms suggest opportunities for collaboration to optimize quality of care.