Costs of anesthetics and other drugs in anesthesia

Introduction. Drugs are real and transparent costs of treatment, which are subject to constant monitoring and changes. The study was aimed at measuring and analyzing consumption of anesthetics and other drugs in anesthesia in the Clinical Centre of Serbia. Material and Methods. This paper is part of a five-year (2005-2009), academic, pharmacoeconomic retrospective-prospective study (the 4th phase). We calculated the costs of anesthetics and other drugs in all anesthetized patients at the Institute of Anesthesia and Reanimation, Clinical Center of Serbia in 2006. The data, obtained from the Clinical Centre of Serbia Database, were analyzed by descriptive statistical methods using computer program Microsoft Office Excel 2003 and the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for Windows. Results. The amount of money spent for the application of 33,187 general and 16,394 local anesthesia and 20,614 anesthesiology procedures was 83,322,046.36 RSD (Euros 1,054,705.4), which was 5.93% of the funds allocated for all drugs used at the Clinical Center of Serbia. Of the total fund for drugs, 57.8% was spent for anesthetics (local anesthetics 1.2%) and muscle relaxants, whereas 42.2% was spent for other drugs in anesthesia. The highest amount was spent at the Emergency Center (35.8%), then at the Cardio-surgery (11.9%) and the Neurosurgery (10.9%) because of the large number and length of surgical interventions. Conclusion. There is no space for rationalizing the costs of anesthetics and other drugs in anesthesia.