The Effect of Regionalization of Thoracic Surgery on Blood Transfusion at the Ottawa Hospital
- 1University of Toronto
Abstract
This paper examines the impact of Cancer Care Ontarios regionalization of lung cancer surgery on blood transfusion use for thoracic surgery at The Ottawa Hospital. Using aggregate data scraped from the paper "Changing trends in blood transfusion: an analysis of 244,013 hospitalizations" by Shehata et al. (2014) we estimated the effect regionalization on the log mean number of blood transfusions among thoracic surgeons (who treat lung cancer), utilizing other surgical specialties as controls. We found that the average number of blood transfusions increased significantly among thoracic surgeons following the opening of a new cancer care centre at the hospital in December 2009, while control specialties showed no parallel change. Contextualizing these results in a modified "population level" treatment threshold model, it is argued that the main driver of this increase in blood transfusions among thoracic surgeons was due to the influx of less skilled thoracic surgeons to The Ottawa Hospital, and the closing of thoracic surgery units at smaller hospitals which was part of the broader regionalization process.
Related
- Progressive implementation of patient blood management and declining transfusion rates in major orthopedic surgery. A single-centre experience
- Blood Transfusion Rates and Predictive Factors in Posterior-Based Minimally Invasive Scoliosis Surgery for Idiopathic Scoliosis: A LASSO-Based Prediction Model
- Interdisciplinary Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery – 2025 Reviewers
- Modified dual-portal robotic-assisted thoracic surgery using a Japanese-manufactured robotic platform
- Interpretable machine learning for predicting intraoperative oxygenation impairment during one-lung ventilation in thoracic surgery: a retrospective cohort study
BibTeX
@misc{smith2026effect,
title = {{The Effect of Regionalization of Thoracic Surgery on Blood Transfusion at the Ottawa Hospital}},
author = {J. Smith and B. Smith and T. Pittman},
howpublished = {medRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.15.26365639},
url = {https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.15.26365639v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - The Effect of Regionalization of Thoracic Surgery on Blood Transfusion at the Ottawa Hospital
AU - J. Smith
AU - B. Smith
AU - T. Pittman
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/15
PB - medRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.15.26365639
UR - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.15.26365639v1
AB - This paper examines the impact of Cancer Care Ontarios regionalization of lung cancer surgery on blood transfusion use for thoracic surgery at The Ottawa Hospital. Using aggregate data scraped from the paper "Changing trends in blood transfusion: an analysis of 244,013 hospitalizations" by Shehata et al. (2014) we estimated the effect regionalization on the log mean number of blood transfusions among thoracic surgeons (who treat lung cancer), utilizing other surgical specialties as controls. We found that the average number of blood transfusions increased significantly among thoracic surgeons following the opening of a new cancer care centre at the hospital in December 2009, while control specialties showed no parallel change. Contextualizing these results in a modified "population level" treatment threshold model, it is argued that the main driver of this increase in blood transfusions among thoracic surgeons was due to the influx of less skilled thoracic surgeons to The Ottawa Hospital, and the closing of thoracic surgery units at smaller hospitals which was part of the broader regionalization process.
ER -