Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status Independently Predicts Outcomes After Mitral Valve Surgery.

Background: Socioeconomic status has increasingly recognized influence on outcomes after cardiac surgery. However, singular metrics fail to fully capture the socioeconomic context within which patients live, which vary greatly between neighborhoods. We sought to explore the impact of neighborhood-level socioeconomic status on patients undergoing mitral valve surgery in the United States.

Methods: Adults undergoing first-time, isolated mitral valve surgery were queried from The Society of Thoracic Surgeons Adult Cardiac Surgery Database between 2012 and 2018. Socioeconomic status was quantified using the Area Deprivation Index, a weighted composite including average housing prices, household incomes, education, and employment levels. The associations between regional deprivation, access to mitral surgery, valve repair rates, and outcomes were evaluated using logistic regression.

Results: Among 137,100 patients included, patients with socioeconomic deprivation had fewer elective presentations, more comorbidity burden, and more urgent/emergent surgery. Patients from less disadvantaged areas received operations from higher volume surgeons and had higher repair rates (highest vs lowest quintile: 72% vs 51%, P < .001, more minimally-invasive approach (33% vs 20%, P < .001), lower composite complication rate (42% vs 50%, P < .001), and lower 30-day mortality (1.8% vs 3.9%, P < .001). After hierarchical multivariable adjustment, the Area Deprivation Index significantly predicted 30-day mortality and repair rate (P < .001).

Conclusions: In a risk-adjusted national analysis of mitral surgery, patients from more deprived areas were less likely to undergo mitral repair and more likely to have complications. Further work at targeting neighborhood-level disparity is important to improving mitral surgical outcomes in the United States.