Inpatient costs of routine endovascular repair of abdominal aortic aneurysm.
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to determine the inpatient cost of routine (ie, without emergent conversion to open repair during the hospital stay) endovascular stent-graft placement in a consecutive series of patients undergoing elective endovascular repair of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) at a single institution.


METHODS
Inpatient hospital costs of 91 patients who underwent initial elective endovascular repair of AAA were analyzed retrospectively. All patients had participated in clinical trials at the authors' institution during the previous 6 years. Financial data were derived from the hospital's cost-accounting system; additional procedural data were collected from a departmental database and with chart review. Stent-graft and professional costs were excluded.


RESULTS
The mean total cost for endovascular repair was $11,842 (standard deviation [SD], $5,127), mean procedure time was 149 minutes (SD, 79 minutes), and mean length of stay was 3.5 days (SD, 2.3 days). Total cost depended on stent-graft type (means, $12,428 [bifurcated] vs $9,622 [tube]; P = .0002) and strongly correlated with procedure time and length of hospital stay (r = 0.78 and 0.66, respectively; P < .0001). Ninety-six percent of total costs for all patients were attributable to the following departments: operating theater (31%), radiology (31%), nursing (22%), and anesthesia (12%).


CONCLUSIONS
Overall costs are greater with bifurcated than with tube stent-grafts. Total procedure-related costs are divided relatively equally between the operating theater, the radiology department, and the combination of the nursing and anesthesia departments.
Lester
J S
JS
Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston 02114, USA.
Bosch
J L
JL
Kaufman
J A
JA
Halpern
E F
EF
Gazelle
G S
GS
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D017546:Angioscopy / Q000191:economics*; D017544:Aortic Aneurysm, Abdominal / Q000191:economics* / Q000601:surgery*; D005260:Female; D017721:Hospital Costs; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015607:Stents / Q000191:economics*