What implications does infrequently occurring complications have for PCI outcomes?
Infrequently occurring complications have substantial implications for PCI outcomes because the rates of major complications, such as death and the need for emergency coronary artery bypass surgery, have decreased significantly in recent years. This means that it can be difficult to interpret outcomes at the individual-provider level due to low-frequency events in a small sample size, which will produce unreliable estimates of provider performance. Thus, certain measures are more appropriately applied to larger aggregated provider groupings where sample sizes are larger.