Provincial carotid endarterectomy outcomes.

Background: Outcomes must be measured as a first step toward improving performance. We sought to measure the national and provincial outcomes from carotid endarterectomy (CE) and explain provincial differences.

Methods: We analyzed a large Canada-wide administrative hospital discharge database of all patients, except those in Quebec, receiving CE in 1994-1997 and used logistic regression for risk adjustment to measure adverse outcomes nationally and by province. Our main outcome measures were in-hospital stroke and/or death.

Results: A total of 14,268 patients underwent CE in the years 1994-1997. The overall death rate was 1.3% and the combined stroke and/or death rate was 4.1%. There was a trend towards improvement over the four years. The provinces of Saskatchewan and Newfoundland had significantly higher adverse event rates for the risk-adjusted combined outcome measure.

Conclusions: The outcome of CE in Canada is good and showed improvement over four years. However, significant differences in provincial outcomes were found. This suggests that regionalization across provincial boundaries may be needed to promote higher surgeon and hospital case volumes and thus improve outcomes.