RESEARCH ARTICLE
Cost-Effectiveness of Image-Guided Spine Surgery
Robert Green Watkins, IV*, 1 , Akash Gupta2, Robert Green Watkins, III1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2010Volume: 4
First Page: 228
Last Page: 233
Publisher ID: TOORTHJ-4-228
DOI: 10.2174/1874325001004010228
Article History:
Received Date: 28/5/2010Revision Received Date: 23/6/2010
Acceptance Date: 25/6/2010
Electronic publication date: 6/8/2010
Collection year: 2010
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Objective:
To determine if image-guided spine surgery is cost effective.
Methods:
A prospective case series of the first 100 patients undergoing thoracolumbar pedicle screw instrumentation under image-guidance was compared to a retrospective control group of the last 100 patients who underwent screw placement prior to the use of image-guidance. The image-guidance system was NaviVision (Vector Vision-BrainLAB) and Arcadis Orbic (Siemens).
Results:
The rate of revision surgery was reduced from 3% to 0% with the use of image guidance (p=0.08). The cost savings of image guidance for the placement of pedicle screws was $71,286 per 100 cases. Time required for pedicle screw placement with image guidance was 20 minutes for 2 screws, 29 minutes for 4 screws, 38 minutes for 6 screws, and 50 min for 8 screws. Cost savings for the time required for placement of pedicle screws with image guidance can be estimated by subtracting the time required with currently used techniques without image guidance from the above averages, then multiplying by $93 per minute. The approximate costs of the navigation system is $475,000 ( $225,000 for Vector Vision-BrainLAB and $250,000 for Arcadis Orbic-Siemens).
Conclusion:
Image guidance for the placement of pedicle screws may be cost effective in spine practices with heavy volume, that perform surgery in difficult cases, and that require long surgical times for the placement of pedicle screws.
