Rise in Plastic Surgery Cost and Improper Use of Surgical Instruments

Plastic Surgery is a surgical field that involves reconstruction, alteration, and restoration of the human body. Every year a great majority of the people go for reconstructive or cosmetic surgery. Reconstructive surgery is done to restore a human body part to its normal state. It is done for the treatment of burns, craniofacial surgery, microsurgery, or hand surgery. Plastic reconstructive surgery also helps in treating Soft Tissue Sarcoma (STS) patients (1). Cosmetic surgery is done to improve appearance. It takes a total of 20 to 30% of surgical volume (2).

Plastic surgery cost is rising rapidly with the rise in the demand of this surgical procedure. Over the last five years, there has been a total of 30% increase in the cost. Over 60% of the total hospital operational expense is spent on the operating room. However, a recent research study shows that the cost of plastic surgery can be minimized by reducing the number of surgical instruments presented on the tray to the surgeon. A group of researchers (3) conducted a study on instrument trays at UNC Rex Hospital. The total sample included 40 major instrument trays. The researchers used technology services, including Operative Flow Technologies, Raleigh, OpFlow, and NC. The project included breast reconstruction trays and general plastic trays for a period of 3 months. By using complex data analytics and concordance system, they found out that only 13 – 21% of instruments presented to the surgeons were used during the surgery. The rest of the instruments were not needed for the surgery. This was the cause of the significant repurchase of surgical instruments and labor expense.

After evaluating 183 plastic surgery cases, the researchers found out that, on average, 15.8% of instruments were used in General Plastic Tray, while 23.5% were used from Breast Reconstruction Tray. Therefore, 32 out of 71 surgical instruments were removed from the General Plastic Tray, and out of 109 surgical instruments, 40 were excluded from the Breast Reconstruction Tray. This leads to the exclusion of 2652 instruments and an annual decrease in 81,696 sterilization cycles. These actions helped in saving surgical instrument repurchasing cost of US $ 163,800. The annual resterilization cost of US $69,441 was also successfully avoided.

This shows us how with proper surgical instrument management, the cost of plastic surgery can be reduced. Hospitals need to go through proper evaluation of the use of the surgical instruments in a specific procedure before including it in the instrument tray. The reduction of cost will make plastic surgical procedures easy to affordable for the public.

Source:

1.    Götzl, R., Sterzinger, S., Arkudas, A., Boos, A. M., Semrau, S., Vassos, N... & Beier, J. P. (2020). The Role of Plastic Reconstructive Surgery in Surgical Therapy of Soft Tissue Sarcomas. Cancers, 12(12), 3534.
2.    Tang, J. Y. M., Pawliuk, C., Bucevska, M., Mulpuri, V., & Arneja, J. S. (2020). What Is Driving Paradigm Shifts in Plastic Surgery and Is Cosmetic Surgery Keeping Up?. Plastic and reconstructive surgery, 145(5), 1164-1171.
3.    Wood, B. C., Konchan, S., Gay, S., Rath, S., Deshpande, V., & Knowles, M. (2021). Data Analysis of Plastic Surgery Instrument Trays Yields Significant Cost Savings and Efficiency Gains. Annals of Plastic Surgery, 86(6S), S635-S639.