• Catherine M Albright, Dwight J Rouse, and Erika F Werner.
• Division of Maternal Fetal Medicine, Women and Infants Hospital, the Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.
• Obstet Gynecol. 2014 Oct 1;124(4):690-6.

ObjectiveTo use decision analysis to evaluate whether and under what conditions routine setup of intraoperative cell salvage during cesarean delivery is cost-saving.MethodsWe developed a decision model to compare costs associated with two strategies for cesarean delivery: 1) routine setup of intraoperative cell salvage; or 2) standard care without intraoperative cell salvage. One-, two-, and three-way sensitivity analyses as well as Monte Carlo simulation were used to assess the robustness of our findings.ResultsAmong nonselected women undergoing cesarean delivery, our base case estimate was that 3.2% would require red blood cell transfusion. Under this assumption, cell salvage is cost-saving only if each woman requires at least 60 units. Conversely, if only two units on average are required, the probability of transfusion needs to be at least 58% for cell salvage to be cost-saving. In our base case analysis, setup of intraoperative cell salvage during routine cesarean deliveries is not cost-saving, increasing the cost per cesarean delivery by $223.80. We found that cell salvage would be cost-saving only in very high-risk scenarios. For example, severe maternal anemia or abnormal placentation, in which 54% and 75% of women are transfused three and two units per case, respectively, would make cell salvage cost-saving.ConclusionSetup of intraoperative cell salvage during cesarean delivery is cost-saving and should be considered only when there is a predictably high probability of transfusion or when a massive transfusion is reasonably likely.

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