Demographics and Outcomes of Spine Surgery in Octogenarians and Nonagenarians: A Comparison of the National Inpatient Sample, MarketScan and National Surgical Quality Improvement Program Databases

Introduction Despite the increasing use of national databases to conduct spine research, questions remain regarding their study validity and consistency. This study tested for similarity and inter-database reliability in reported measures between three commonly used national databases. Methods International Classification of Diseases, 9th edition (ICD-9) codes were used to identify elderly (80-100 years) who underwent spine surgery patients in Truven Health Analytics MarketScan® claims database, National (Nationwide) Inpatient Sample (NIS) discharge database and National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) database (2006-2016). Patient baseline characteristics, comorbid status, insurance enrollment, and outcomes were queried and compared. Results We analyzed 15,105 MarketScan, 40,854 NIS, and 7682 NSQIP patients between ages 80 to 100 years (median, 82 years) who underwent spine surgeries during the study period. A majority of patients in both MarketScan and NIS were insured by Medicare (97% vs. 94%). Patients in MarketScan had lower comorbidity scores (comorbidity, 0-2) compared to those in NIS and NSQIP databases. The most common diagnosis was spinal stenosis in MarketScan (54.4%), NIS (54.6%), and NSQIP databases (65.2%). Fusion was the most common procedure performed in MarketScan (48.9%) and NIS databases (46.2%), whereas decompression (laminectomy/laminotomy) was the most common procedure in the NSQIP database (51.84%). In-hospital complications (any) were 6.5% in the MarketScan cohort, 5.3% in the NIS, and 2.02% in the NSQIP cohort. In terms of 30-day complications (any), the MarketScan database reported higher complications rate (12.7%) compared to the NSQIP database (5.08%). In-hospital mortality was slightly higher in the NIS database (0.32%) compared to MarketScan (0.21%) and NSQIP database (0.2%). MarketScan and NIS databases showed an increased risk of complications with increasing age, whereas NIS and NSQIP showed increasing complications with a higher number of comorbidities. Male gender had higher complication at 30-day post-discharge using MarketScan and NSQIP database. Conclusions Patients in the NSQIP and NIS database have more comorbidities; patients in the MarketScan database had the highest number of perioperative and 30-day post-discharge complications with the highest number of fusion procedures performed. Patients in the NSQIP database had the lowest number of fusion procedures and complication rates. As databases gain popularity in spine surgery, clinicians and reviewers should be cautious in generalizing results to whole populations and pay close attention to the population being represented by the data from which the statistical significance was derived.