The cost of intraoperative adverse events in abdominal and pelvic surgery: A systematic review.

BACKGROUND: The assessment of intra-operative adverse events (iAEs) is a vastly under researched area with the potential to provide new methods on how to improve patient outcomes and hospital costs. Our objective was to determine the relationship between iAEs and total hospital costs in abdominal and pelvic surgery.

DATA SOURCES: We used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework. Embase, MEDLINE and EBM Reviews online databases were searched to identify all studies that reported iAE rates and total hospital costs. We then analyzed the costing approach used in each article using the Drummond tool and evaluated articles quality using the GRADE method.

CONCLUSIONS: In total, 1709 unique references were identified through our literature search. After review, 23 were included. All studies that reported iAE rates and cost as the primary outcome found that iAEs significantly increased total hospital costs. We identified a relationship between iAEs and increased hospital costs. Future studies need to be performed to further evaluate the relationship between iAEs and cost as current studies are of low quality.