Article Text
Abstract
Background Endovascular treatment of aneurysms with coils is among the most frequent treatments in interventional neuroradiology, and represents an important expense. Each manufacturer has created several types of coils, with prices varying among brands and coil types. The objective of this study was to assess the impact of cost awareness of the exact price of each coil by the operating physician on the total cost of aneurysm coiling.
Materials and methods This was a comparative study conducted over 1 year in a single tertiary care center. The reference cohort and the experimental cohort consisted of all aneurysm embolization procedures performed during the first 6 months and the last 6 months, respectively. During the second period, physicians were given an information sheet with the prices of all available coils and were requested to look at the sheet during each procedure with the instruction to try to reduce the total cost of the coils used. Expenses related to the coiling procedures during each period were compared.
Results 77 aneurysms (39 ruptured) in the reference cohort and 73 aneurysms (36 ruptured) in the experimental cohort were treated, respectively. There was no statistically significant difference regarding aneurysm location and mean size. The overall cost of the coiling procedures, the mean number of coils used per procedure, and the median cost of each procedure did not differ significantly between the two cohorts.
Conclusion Awareness of the precise price of coils by operators without any additional measure did not have a scientifically proven impact on the cost of aneurysm embolization.
- aneurysm
- coil
- economics
- brain
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Footnotes
Contributors SNF is the corresponding author and contributed to the analysis of the data and writing of the manuscript. RF had substantial contribution in the conception of the work, the collection of the data, as well as the writing of the manuscript, and approval the version to be published. IG made substantial contribution to the collection of the data. DR made substantial contribution to the conception of the work and in the approval of the version to be published. AW made substantial contribution to the conception, design, writing of the manuscript, and approval of the version to be published.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement The authors declare that the data pertaining to the study are available upon request from the corresponding author.