A study published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology examined the short- and long-term outcomes of Clostridium difficile infection in the elderly.
Researchers used 2011 Medicare claims data to conduct a retrospective study that included all elderly persons coded for C. diff and a sample of uninfected persons. They analyzed propensity score-matched pairs and stratified the entire population by the propensity score to determine outcomes measures. In all, they compared 174,903 patients coded for C. diff with 1.3 million control patients.
Researchers found C. diff was associated with increased risk of death, new long-term care facility transfer and new short-term skilled nursing facility transfer within 30 days of hospitalization in matched-pairs analyses.
In a stratified analysis, C. diff was linked with greatest risk of 30-day all-cause mortality in persons with lowest baseline probability of C. diff. Additionally, C. diff was associated with increased risk of subsequent 30-day, 90-day and one-year hospitalization.