Objectives: Clostridium-difficile (c-diff) bacterium infect the large intestine causing symptoms ranging from pain and discomfort to diarrhea and life-threatening inflammation. While more than half a million Americans are impacted yearly, the most at risk are older adults or those with immune related disorders being treated with a biologic. Methods: From the 2014 Medicare MedPAR dataset, 70589 cases of c-diff were reported. A Bayesian network was utilized with primary nodes for surgery performed connected to length of stay (LOS) of 7+ days as well as death in hospital. Secondary nodes of a radiology test occurring, gender, and age of 80+ were included. Conditional probabilities were assessed and then updated when death was observed. Results: LOS for c-diff was exponentially distributed where l = 0.158. 66.08% of patients were female and 41.25% where 80+ years old. 2.145% of the c-diff patients died while in hospital, where 69.44% of those that died had surgery performed and 35.26% of those that survived had surgery. The median LOS was 7 days for those that died and 5 for those that survived, where 22% of those that did not have surgery and 49.2% that had surgery had a LOS of 7+ days. When death was observed, 52% of patients had a LOS of 7+ days and 71% had surgery, suggesting that surgery occurring is directly impacting both length of stay and death. 77% of those that had surgery had a radiology test performed, 63% were female, and 61% were 80+ years old. Conclusions: This analysis highlights the heavy hospital resource utilization of patients diagnosed with c-diff and the heavy burden of infection in the oldest age brackets of beneficiaries. Multiple pharmaceutical companies have c-diff vaccines in development that may help alleviate some of this burden. Results from this analysis highlight the unmet need in older Medicare patients.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.