Increased Length of Stay After Pulmonary Lobectomy for Patients with Comorbid Psychiatric Illness

Hypothesis: Patients with psychiatric comorbidity will have increased morbidity and mortality after pulmonary lobectomy.

Methods: This study is a retrospective review of medical records at the West Haven Veteran Administration Hospital from July 2008 through December 2011. Patients with and without comorbid psychiatric illness undergoing pulmonary lobectomy for primary non-small cell lung cancer were compared using t tests for continuous and Fisher’s exact tests for categorical variables to determine significance.

Results: There were 33 patients reviewed, of which 13 and 20 were with and without an Axis-I psychiatric diagnosis, respectively. Postoperative length of stay was significantly different between patients with and without psychiatric comorbidity, 14.1 ± 3.1 and 7.7 ± 1.1 days respectively (p = 0.03). Postoperative mortality was not significantly different between the two groups at 30-days (p = 0.39) or 1-year (p = 1).

Conclusions: Patients with psychiatric comorbidity experience an increased post-operative length of stay in hospital after surgery. A significant difference in mortality was not seen, as the number of patients that died during the study period was too small to detect a difference between these two groups.