Deltex Medical (LON:DEMG) has highlighted a major US study of fluid management during and after surgery that found wide variations in practices and significant impacts on patient recovery.
The oesophageal Doppler monitoring (ODM) specialist supported the study, which analysed data on 650,000 patients in 500 US hospitals treated for rectal, colonic and hip/knee surgery in the database of partner Premier Research.
The full results have been posted online but will also be published in the influential Annals of Surgery..
Key findings were that the use of fluid management varied widely both on the day of surgery and afterwards, while the quartiles who received the lowest and highest amounts of fluids stayed in hospital longer and cost more to treat.
The association between fluid management and poor outcomes was consistent for both open procedures and keyhole operations, the study found.
Ewan Phillips, Deltex Medical's chief executive said it was the first 'Big Data' study of the impact of variation in fluid management on patient outcomes and costs.
“It confirms that reducing such variation should be a high impact focus area for quality improvement in health systems looking to improve patient outcomes, reduce costs or both.”
“This will be highly advantageous to our goal of establishing ODM as a standard of care.
“We believe ODM is the most precise fluid management technology available, allowing doctors to get patients as close as possible to their individual optimal fluid zone during surgery."
Professor M Mythen, one the study’s authors, added: “More careful, meticulous attention to detail, combined with, where appropriate, the use of more advanced monitoring has repeatedly demonstrated that patients are more likely to end up in that optimal zone in the middle and have a better outcome."