Cost-Benefit Analysis of a Pediatric ICU Sedation Weaning Protocol

A risk stratified sedation weaning protocol improved patient outcomes in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). We sought to determine the protocol effect on medication costs.

This was a retrospective observational cohort study in an academic tertiary care children's hospital PICU (2018-2020) comparing the cost when weaning benzodiazepine, alpha agonist, and/or opioid infusions in intubated children <18 years of age.

There were 84 total sedation weaning instances (pre-protocol n = 41 and post-protocol n = 41); 2 patients had 2 encounters, 1 in each phase. The total cost (in 2022 United States Dollars) of sedation weaning was $400,328.87 ($15,994.44/kg) pre-protocol compared with $170,458.85 ($11,227.52/kg) post-protocol. The median cost of sedation wean per patient for pre-protocol patients was $3197.42 (IQR: $322.66-$12,643.29) and post-protocol patients was $1851.44 (IQR: $425.05-$5355.85; p = 0.275). A linear regression model estimated the expected cost of sedation wean for post-protocol patients to be $5173.20 lower than for pre-protocol patients of the same weight and overall drug risk (p = 0.036). The proportion of withdrawal symptoms in the pre-protocol patients (16%) was not significantly different from the proportion in the post-protocol patients (14%; p = 0.435).

Implementation of a PICU sedation weaning protocol in a single-center conferred cost benefit without negatively impacting patient outcomes. A larger multicenter study would provide insight to the applicability to PICUs in varied settings with differing patient populations.