Deerfield
About Deerfield

Launched in 1994, Deerfield Management Company is an investment firm dedicated to advancing healthcare through information, investment, and philanthropy—all toward the end goal of cures for disease, improved quality of life, and reduced cost of care.

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Investment

Supporting companies across the healthcare ecosystem with flexible funding models…

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Information

Delivering market research to the Deerfield team, its portfolio companies and other partners.

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Philanthropy

A New York City-based not-for-profit devoted to advancing innovative health care initiatives.

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Portfolio Companies

Deerfield generally maintains a combined portfolio of more than 150 private and public investments across the life science, medical device, diagnostic, digital health and health service industries at all stages of evolution from start-up to mature company.

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Research Collaborations

Deerfield partners with leading academic research centers, providing critical funding and expertise to further sustain and accelerate the commercialization of discoveries toward meaningful societal impact by advancing cures for disease.

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Strategic Partners

As a strategic partner, Deerfield offers capital, scientific expertise, business operating support, and unique access to innovation.

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Deerfield Foundation

The Deerfield Foundation is a New York City-based not-for-profit organization whose mission is to improve health, accelerate innovation and promote human equity.

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Cure Campus

Cure is a 12-story innovations campus in New York City that intends to bring together innovators from academia, government, industry, and the not-for-profit sectors to advance human health and accelerate the fight against disease.

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Cure Programming

Cure has a series of expert lectures intended to advance thought in healthcare, management, innovation, policy, and other relevant subjects. This fosters growth and education for those at Cure and its guests.

Events at the Cure

Predictors of laparoscopic hysterectomy for leiomyoma surgical removal in the United States

Objectives

Leiomyomas (uterine fibroids) are benign tumors that are prevalent among women of reproductive age and affect approximately 80% of premenopausal women. Hysterectomy is one of the most common surgical procedures for removal of uterine fibroids. Laparoscopic hysterectomy (LH) has increasingly been used as an alternative to the open surgical hysterectomy (OSH). The purpose of this study was to identify predictors of LH procedures among leiomyoma patients.

Methods

The National Inpatient Sample (NIS) is the largest publicly available inpatient healthcare database in the US, containing a 20% stratified systematic random sample of all US community hospital discharges. Thirteen years of available data, 2002–2014, were used for this analysis. International Classification of Diseases 9th revision (ICD-9) codes were used to identify all records of women with primary discharge diagnosis of uterine leiomyoma who had undergone either LH or OSH. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify significant predictors of LH. Population sampling weights were used to extrapolate results to national estimates.

Results

There were 310,150 leiomyoma LH procedures from 2002 to 2014, corresponding to 22.5% of the total number of leiomyoma hysterectomy procedures. The mean age of patients undergoing LH was significantly higher than those undergoing OSH (45.69 years vs 43.29 years; p<0.001). After adjusting for covariates, significant predictors of LH procedures included age > 50 years (OR=3.18; 95% CI=3.57-4.07), hospital location in the West (OR=1.46; 95% CI=1.38-1.86), and hospital urban non-teaching status (OR=1.20; 95% CI=1.04-1.38).

Conclusions

The study shows that despite the advances in surgical technologies, there are very few predictors of non-conventional laparoscopic approach to leiomyoma hysterectomy. Our findings suggest that there is a differential access to LH procedures among the US population which may be, in part, a result of racial and socioeconomic differences and centralization of laparoscopy services in urban areas.