Eea circular stapler

The study population was classified by device used: (1) Ethicon manual circular staplers (two-row), (2) Medtronic EEA^™ circular stapler with DST^™ technology (two-row), and (3) Medtronic EEA^™ circular stapler with Tri-Staple^™ technology (three-row). Ethicon manual circular staplers included Ethicon Legacy Curved Intraluminal Stapler, Legacy Endoscopic Intraluminal Stapler, and Ethicon^™ Circular Stapler, XL Sealed. The ECHELON CIRCULAR^™ Powered Stapler, which uses powered mechanism for firing staples, was not included in the study due to the different technology in comparison to manual circular staplers (fired under manual grip force). The identification of devices was based on a query of unstructured text fields in the PHD for model numbers and brand names, including variants such as misspellings and abbreviations.

Patients meeting all of the following criteria were included in the study: those who had billing charges for a study device (Ethicon manual circular staplers, Medtronic EEA^™ circular stapler with DST Series^™ technology, or Medtronic EEA^™ circular stapler with Tri-Staple^™ technology) at the index admission (i.e., the initial admission where a study device was identified) between January 1, 2019, and November 30, 2022; who underwent a left-sided colorectal surgery (i.e., the index procedure), defined as presence of a qualifying procedure code for left-sided colorectal surgery, at the index admission; and who were ≥ 18 years at the index admission.
Patients were excluded from the study if they had any of the following: missing data on age or sex (an indicator of poor data quality), presence of a diagnosis indicating AL on admission during the index admission, and billing charges for ≥ 2 study devices of interest during the index admission.