Study population:
Our study population was patients with a primary diagnosis of
ventricular tachycardia who underwent catheter ablation. ICD 10 codes
(025K3ZZ, 025L3ZZ, 025M3ZZ, 02583ZZ). Patients were excluded if they
were younger than 18, had a primary insurance other than Medicare,
Medicaid, private insurance, or self-pay. We excluded patients having a
secondary diagnosis of paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia, atrial
fibrillation, atrial flutter, ventricular premature beats,
pre-excitation syndrome, AV nodal tachycardia, and atrial tachycardia.
Also, to avoid inclusions of patients undergoing ablation of the AV
junction, we excluded patients with diagnostic or procedural codes
indicating prior or current implantation of a pacemaker. December
discharges and patients who died in index admission were excluded on
evaluating 30 days readmission outcomes. Patient characteristics
included age, gender, median household income and primary insurance.
Hospital characteristics included hospital bed size and teaching status.
In accordance with the HCUP data use agreement, we excluded any variable
containing a small number of observations (≤10) that could pose risk of
person identification or data privacy violation. This approach for
identification of admissions with AF and catheter ablation has been
previously described and used by other investigators [3]