Background

Pediatric oncology patients have high rates of hospital readmission but there is a dearth of research into risk factors for unplanned 30-day readmissions among this high-risk population.

Aim

In this study, we built a statistical model to provide insight into risk factors of unplanned readmissions in this pediatric oncology.

Methods

We retrieved 32 667 encounters from 10 418 pediatric patients with a neoplastic condition from 16 hospitals in the Cerner Health Facts Database and built a mixed-effects model with patients nested within hospitals for inference on 75% of the data and reserved the remaining as an independent test dataset.

Results

The mixed-effects model indicated that patients with acute lymphoid leukemia (in relapse), neuroblastoma, rhabdomyosarcoma, or bone/cartilage cancer have increased odds of readmission. The number of cancer medications taken by the patient and the administration of chemotherapy were associated with increased odds of readmission for all cancer types. Wilms Tumor had a significant interaction with administration of chemotherapy, indicating that the risk due to chemotherapy is exacerbated in patients with Wilms Tumor. A second two-way interaction between recent history of chemotherapy treatment and infections was associated with increased odds of readmission. The area under the receiver operator characteristic curve (and corresponding 95% confidence interval) of the mixed-effects model was 0.714 (0.702, 0.725) on the independent test dataset.

Conclusion

Readmission risk in oncology is modified by the specific type of cancer, current and past administration of chemotherapy, and increased health care utilization. Oncology-specific models can provide decision support where model built on other or mixed population has failed.