(Press-News.org) DETROIT – Treating varicose veins with vein-stripping surgery is associated with higher costs than closing the veins with heat, according to a study at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
"Cost-effectiveness is an important factor to consider when comparing different treatments for varicose vein disease," says Judith C. Lin, M.D., vascular surgeon and lead author of the study. "And these two types of treatment have similar effectiveness."
The study will be presented March 13 at the 41st Annual Symposium of the Society for Clinical Vascular Surgery in Miami.
The current treatment of choice over surgery for physicians and patients with superficial venous insufficiency and varicose veins, whose veins aren't strong enough to pump blood back to the heart, is endovenous catheter ablation. This procedure involves targeting heat energy inside a vein to seal it. Heat may be created by a laser (endovenous laser ablation, or EVLA) or by radio waves (endovenous radiofrequency ablation, or RFA). With the diseased vein sealed, other healthy veins carry blood from the leg, re-establishing the normal flow.
The retrospective study of hospital and office costs was performed by analyzing costs of patients undergoing stripping of a major leg vein, RFA, and EVLA between January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2011 at hospitals and physician's offices within the Health Ford Health System.
Costs were divided into charges, net revenue, total cost, variable cost, direct cost, variable contribution margin, program contribution margin, and profit or loss categories. All costs were normalized to 2010 and 2011 values.
A total of 152 vein procedures in 2010, and 156 cases in 2011 were performed in an office setting; 73 vein procedures in 2010 and 71 cases in 2011 were done in a hospital operating room.
In 2010, higher costs per case were consistently seen in vein stripping ($5458) and vein ablation ($4884) performed in the operating room, as compared to RFA ($1074) and EVLA ($1534) performed in the office.
EVLA and RFA are highly effective, minimally invasive procedures, usually performed in a doctor's office, explains Dr. Lin. No general anesthesia or hospitalization is needed. There is very little scarring, and patients can resume normal activities immediately.
INFORMATION:
The study was funded by Henry Ford Hospital.
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Initial vaccinations for human papillomavirus (HPV) at a young age is important for maximizing quadrivalent HPV vaccine effectiveness according to a Swedish study published March 13 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
HPV vaccination programs have been launched around the world in hopes of preventing cervical cancer and other HPV-related cancers. While incidence of genital warts is the earliest possible disease outcome to measure the efficacy of the HPV vaccine, the results of such efficacy trials may not be fully generalizable to real-life HPV vaccination ...
HOUSTON -- (March 13, 2013) – Few things in life are inevitable – death, taxes, and, if you live long enough, osteoarthritis.
No treatment will stop or significantly slow the disease, and joint replacement is the only definitive treatment. That may change, however, as researchers such as Dr. Brendan Lee (http://www.bcm.edu/genetics/index.cfm?pmid=10940), professor of molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine (http://www.bcm.edu), and his colleagues unravel the effects of a naturally occurring protein called lubricin or Proteoglycans 4 that appears to ...
University of Montreal researchers found that changes in gravity affect the reproductive process in plants. Gravity modulates traffic on the intracellular "highways" that ensure the growth and functionality of the male reproductive organ in plants, the pollen tube. "Just like during human reproduction, the sperm cells in plants are delivered to the egg by a cylindrical tool. Unlike the delivery tool in animals, the device used during plant sex consists of a single cell, and only two sperm cells are discharged during each delivery event," explained Professor Anja Geitmann ...
Vitamin D supplements significantly reduced blood pressure in the first large controlled study of African-Americans, researchers report in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension.
In the prospective trial, a three-month regimen of daily vitamin D increased circulating blood levels of vitamin D and resulted in a decrease in systolic blood pressure ranging from .7 to four mmHg (depending upon the dose given), compared with no change in participants who received a placebo.
Systolic blood pressure, the top and highest number in a reading, is pressure in the arteries ...
The precise methodology of Richard Feynman's famous double-slit thought-experiment – a cornerstone of quantum mechanics that showed how electrons behave as both a particle and a wave – has been followed in full for the very first time.
Although the particle-wave duality of electrons has been demonstrated in a number of different ways since Feynman popularised the idea in 1965, none of the experiments have managed to fully replicate the methodology set out in Volume 3 of Feynman's famous Lectures on Physics.
"The technology to do this experiment has been around for about ...
Doctors at Yale School of Medicine and the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) have called upon their fellow physicians to limit or end the practice of prescribing memory-enhancing drugs to healthy children whose brains are still developing. Their position statement is published in the March 13 online issue of the journal Neurology, the medical journal of the AAN.
The statement was written to address the growing trend in which teens use "study drugs" before tests and parents request attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drugs for children who don't meet the ...
This press release is available in French.
Christopher Cameron of the University of Montreal's Department of Biological Sciences and his colleagues have unearthed a major scientific discovery - a strange phallus-shaped creature they found in Canada's Burgess Shale fossil beds, located in Yoho National Park. The fossils were found in an area of shale beds that are 505 million years old.
Their study, to be published online in the journal Nature on March 13, 2013, confirms Spartobranchus tenuis is a member of the acorn worms group which are seldom-seen animals that thrive ...
Canada's 505 million year-old Burgess Shale fossil beds, located in Yoho National Park, have yielded yet another major scientific discovery – this time with the unearthing of a strange phallus-shaped creature.
A study to be published online in the journal Nature on March 13 confirms Spartobranchus tenuis is a member of the acorn worms group which are seldom-seen animals that thrive today in the fine sands and mud of shallow and deeper waters. Acorn worms are themselves part of the hemichordates, a group of marine animals closely related to today's sea stars and sea ...
BOULDER, Colo.— One of the oldest forms of computer memory is back again—but in a 21st century microscopic device designed by physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for possible use in a
quantum computer.
The NIST team has demonstrated that
information encoded as a specific point in a
traveling microwave signal—the vertical and horizontal positions of a wave pattern at a certain time—can be transferred to the mechanical beat of a micro-drum and later retrieved with 65 percent efficiency, a good figure for experimental systems like this. ...
Observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) show that the most vigorous bursts of star birth in the cosmos took place much earlier than previously thought. The results are published in a set of papers to appear in the journal Nature and in the Astrophysical Journal. The research is the most recent example of the discoveries coming from the new international ALMA observatory, which celebrates its inauguration today.
The most intense bursts of star birth are thought to have occurred in the early Universe, in massive, bright galaxies. These ...
