The Economic Efficiency of the Single Stage Management of Left Colon Cancer Patient

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: Two-stage management with Hartmann's procedure is the most common procedure used for the treatment of obstructive left colon cancer with or without perforation. However, single-stage procedures have gained popularity recently with reports that show little difference in safety compared to the conventional multi-stage procedures. To evaluate the economic advantage of single stage procedure compare with two stage procedure in emergent left colonic pathology. METHODS: Eleven patients (SP; single stage procedure) without other accompanying diseases among 15 patients who entered the emergency room and treated by the single stage procedure using the intraoperative irrigation for the left colon obstructions with or without perforation during the period from July of 1999 to November of 2000, were compared in their costs retrospectively with 11 patients (MP; multiple stage procedure) without other accompanying diseases and had final reduction of stoma out of 28 patients treated by Hartman's procedures including the resections of lesions during the period from September 1996 to May 1999 with the same diagnosis. The costs were compared using Mann-Whitney U tests, with data on the costs of overall treatments, operations, anesthesia, admission room, medications, test/evaluations, and managements as well as days of hospital stay, all on the record of accounting department. The relationships of the factors to the total cost of treatment were evaluated using Multi-variant regression analysis, and the pre-operative physiologic status were compared using APACHE III scoring system. The total treatment cost did not include optional treatment costs, uninsured admission room costs, and the costs of colonic irrigator used in the operations for the SP. RESULTS: There were no significant difference in the age and gender of the two groups as 67 +/-15 years with 6 males for the SP and 6+/-19 years with 7 males for the MP. The preoperative physiologic status of patients, in APACHE III scoring system, were 29.1+/-10.6 in the SP and 26.1+/-8.2 in the MP without any significant difference between the two groups. The average of hospital stay showed a significant difference between two groups as 17.1+/-6.2 (range 13-25) days for the SP and 31.3 (range 24-43) days for the MP (p<0.01). The average of total costs showed also a significant difference in two groups as 3,938 687 (range 3,017-4,974) thousand won for the SP and 7,543 1,851 (range 5,314-9925) thousand won for the MP (p<0.01). It showed that the SP had roughly 50, 53, 76, 79, and 72% reductions of costs over operations, anesthesia, admission room, medications, tests/evaluations, and managements. The analysis of the overall costs of treatments showed 3,540 thousand won reduction in SP. CONCLUSIONS: Single stage procedure using intraoperative colonic irrigation technique showed no difference in safety but has an economical advantage over the conventional multiple stage in the management of emergent left colonic obstruction or perforation patients.