Determining the most important factors in hospital readmission following surgery for lung cancer

With the recent development of novel drugs and the improvement in surgical instruments, the increase in medical care related expenses has become a social issue in several developed countries. Although the present medical oncology is represented by expensive immune- checkpoint inhibitors and robot-assisted surgery, reducing medical expenses is one of the crucial tasks for national health policy. In the field of surgery for lung cancer, one of the most effective ways of reducing medical expenses is preventing postoperative complications. In Japan, for example, the prospective payment system, known as the Diagnosis Procedure Combination (DPC), introduced by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, has been applied in major medical institutes since 2003 (1). In the DPC system, inpatient medical care-related expenses are calculated based on the diagnosis-related group and not on the actual expenses. In the case of surgical intervention, medical institutes accrue less benefit as postoperative complications occur in this system. It is, thus, important for medical institutes to prevent postoperative complications not only to reduce patient mortality but also to obtain reasonable gain.