The Association Between Hospital Comprehensive Stroke Center Designation Status and Stroke Rate Reporting in the Society of Thoracic Surgeons/American College of Cardiology Transcatheter Valve Therapy Registry After Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement: Implications for Hospital Performance Assessment.

Hospital Comprehensive Stroke Center designation is independently associated with higher reported stroke rates after TAVR, affecting performance assessments for 8 of 153 hospitals.

• Why it matters: Understanding how hospital structural factors influence stroke reporting is crucial for accurate performance evaluation and public transparency in TAVR outcomes.
• What they did: Analyzing data from over 525,000 TAVRs across 800 sites from 2016 to 2023, researchers used multivariable models to assess the relationship between CSC status and stroke rates, adjusting for patient and hospital factors.
• The result: Adjusting for CSC status improved performance metrics for some hospitals, highlighting the need to consider structural factors and potential reporting biases in public hospital performance assessments.