Pharmacoeconomics of xenon application in outpatient dental practice in children.

Actuality. Any area of medical activity in modern conditions is inextricably linked with the assessment of the pharmacoeconomic component of all ongoing processes, including anesthesiological activity. Undoubtedly, it is of interest to assess the direct medical costs associated with the use of the inhalation anesthetic xenon, which has unique pharmacological characteristics and is becoming increasingly popular in outpatient dental practice.

The purpose of the study. To assess the pharmacoeconomic effect of xenon use in outpatient dental practice in children. Materials and methods. The open prospective randomized study included 117 children of both sexes (45 girls, 72 boys). Statistical processing was performed in the STATISTICA 10 program. The data are presented as median and quartiles Me (Q1, Q3), for intergroup comparisons, the Mann-Whitney criterion was used. The target significance level was p ≤ 0.05.

Results. With an average anesthesia time of 108 minutes in the study, the overall average xenon consumption in the presented sample of patients corresponded to 13 liters or 7 l/hour, while direct costs for it amounted to 36 thousand rubles or 310 rubles/min. At the stage of filling the breathing circuit with anesthetic (anesthesia machine - patient), the xenon consumption averaged 3 liters over 2 minutes in all assessed cases, which corresponded to financial costs during this period of anesthesia of 8 thousand rubles or 3 thousand rubles/min. At the stage of maintaining anesthesia, the xenon consumption was on average 10 liters, which corresponded to 28 thousand rubles or 280 rubles/min.

Conclusions. The highest consumption of 1.5 l/min and financial costs of 3 thousand rubles/min of xenon per unit of time were noted at the stage of induction of anesthesia. At the same time, the total average consumption of the drug during the entire anesthesia was almost 10 times less than the anesthesia induction stage and did not exceed 310 rubles/min. The use of technical devices and technologies in the future that reduce xenon losses into the atmosphere at the anesthesia induction stage will reduce the financial costs of its use.