Volatile Anesthetic Choice and Duration of Hospitalization: A Quality Improvement and Cost-control Project
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2013-04-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Preliminary retrospective data suggest that the relatively soluble but inexpensive volatile
anesthesia isoflurane prolongs the duration of hospitalization compared to the less soluble
but more expensive anesthetic sevoflurane. Even a small reduction in the duration of
hospitalization would easily compensate for the modest additional cost of sevoflurane. The
investigators therefore propose to test the primary hypothesis that duration of
hospitalization is longer with isoflurane than sevoflurane.
The investigators will also test the secondary hypotheses that: 1) pain scores are greater in
patients recovering from isoflurane than sevoflurane anesthesia; and, 2) opioid consumption
is greater after isoflurane than sevoflurane anesthesia. All statistical analyses will be
adjusted for age, gender, race, baseline risk, 9 and procedure.