Preventability of Hospital-Acquired Venous Thromboembolism

patients with complicated appendicitis, 173 (42.3%) were identified as having a serum sodium level of less than 135 mEq/L (to convert to millimoles per liter, multiply by 1.0). Longer hospital lengths of stay, deep surgical site infections, and return visits to the emergency department were more prevalent among patients with complicated appendicitis. Exploratory logistic regression analysis identified significant cut points and 4 independent predictors for complicated appendicitis, of which hyponatremia was found to have the strongest association with this outcome (Table 2). The C statistic or area under the curve of the model was 0.71. The Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit statistic was P = .90.