Prevalence of low flow anesthesia and its cost comparison with other anesthesia techniques in an Indian tertiary care...

The usage of high fresh gas flows with expensive volatile agents is known to cause substantial economic losses. Practicing low flow anesthesia can minimize these costs. The average costs of different anesthetic techniques, used for maintenance of general anesthesia and the frequency of use of low flows were evaluated.

We noted the consumption of anesthetic gases and volatile agents during routine surgeries in our institute for two weeks (10 consecutive full working days). According to the anesthetic agent and fresh gas flow used, all general anesthetics were divided into four groups i.e. low flow (gas flows < or = 1 L/min) and high flow anesthesia (gas flows > 1 L/min) with isoflurane, halothane anesthesia (gas flows > 1 L/min) and propofol intravenous anesthesia (gas flows > 1 L/min). We calculated the individual cost of maintenance of anesthesia on per hour basis for each group based on average flows and anesthetic concentrations used.

Low flow anesthesia is sparingly used in our institution (4.1%). Halothane with fresh gas flow > 1 L/min is the most commonly used anesthetic technique (45.9%). Propofol anesthesia was nearly equal to low flow isoflurane anesthesia in terms of costs. Using higher fresh gas flows with isoflurane increases this cost by three times.

Low flow anesthesia is still sparingly used. Low flow isoflurane anesthesia is equivalent in terms of costs to propofol anesthesia though more expensive than conventional anesthesia with halothane.