New York City-based Hospital for Special Surgery researchers found patients undergoing hip or knee replacements can lower healthcare costs with neuraxial anesthesia as the primary anesthetic.
The researchers presented their data at the American Society of Regional Anesthesiologists annual meeting. They analyzed data from 766,100 knee replacements and 354,894 hip replacements enrolled in the Premier Perspective database from 2006 to 2014.
The study authors found:
1. Among the hospitals where neuraxial anesthesia is used in 49 percent to 97 percent of lower joint replacement cases, there was 24 percent decreased odds for respiratory and cardiac complications when compared to the hospitals that used neuraxial anesthesia in zero percent to 4 percent of the cases.
2. Hospitals with the highest volume of patients that used neuraxial anesthesia realized a 19 percent decrease in total knee replacement costs and 17 percent decrease in total hip replacement costs.
3. The findings could be due to lower odds for adverse outcomes, particularly among total knee replacement patients, according to Stavros Memtsoudis, MD, PhD, lead author of the study and researcher in the HSS department of anesthesiology.
"Use of neuraxial anesthesia utilization on a hospital level may very well emerge as an important marker of quality; however additional studies are needed to elucidate drivers associated with perioperative outcomes," he said.