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Abstract

Pulmonary vein stenosis (PVS) in children is challenging to treat and requires close surveillance to determine disease progression and need for intervention. Despite advances in care for patients with PVS in recent years, evidence-based practices for surveillance have not yet been established. Thus, a lack of consensus in surveillance and variation in surveillance screening practices persists. The standard surveillance at one PVS center is echocardiogram (ECHO) and nuclear medicine pulmonary flow scan (NMPFS). To decrease cost and risk associated with NMPFS, the expert opinion at this PVS center at an academic center explored novel ECHO reading in comparison with NMPFS of 12 pediatric patients retrospectively. This project determined the annual cost savings per year when routine NMPFS was eliminated for pediatric patients (n = 12) with PVS was $51,502.00. There was a significant savings between pediatric patients and their families who traveled more frequently to the PVS center at the academic center (n = 7) to those pediatric patients and their families who traveled only one time per year to the PVS center (n = 5); t (5) = 2.02, p = 0.0002. To decrease healthcare costs and eliminate unnecessary procedures for children with PVS, this quality improvement project provided a cost-savings analysis when NMPFS is eliminated from standard surveillance.

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