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Objectives: The study objective was to correlate operating room costs of elective colectomies with outcome.
Design: Retrospective observational study. Statistical analysis included t-test, ANOVA and Spearman correlation.
Setting: Tertiary care academic medical center.
Patients: 114 consecutive patients who underwent an elective colectomy were analyzed collectively and in subgroups by type of operation: Right colectomy laparoscopic, Right colectomy open, Left colectomy laparoscopic, Left colectomy open, Total colectomy/proctectomy, Laparoscopic converted to open colectomy (table 1).
The total operating room cost was calculated for each patient as charges for equipment utilized plus personnel cost by increments of time.
Main Outcome Measures: Outcome was expressed as a weighted numerical score for each patient, ranging from 0 to 10. The score took into account hospital length of stay, minor and major complications; e.g. a length of stay of less than four days without complications was a 10; a postoperative death a 0.
Results: For the entire group, cost ranged from $387 to $8262 (mean = $2176 ± 1244). The mean outcome score was 8.01 ± 2.4 (p = 0.091) (scatter graph). The cost versus outcome data and analysis per subgroup is reported in table 1.
Conclusions: Higher operating room expenditures did not achieve a superior outcome for elective colectomy in this study. This preliminary work may prompt further analyses of resource utilization versus outcome in surgical practice.

Table 1

Procedure	N	$Cost±SD	Outcome±SD	p value
R - lap	29	2165 ± 629	9.03 ± 1.95	0.6855
R - open	21	1318 ± 515	8.24 ± 2.51	0.4194
L - lap	10	2392 ± 484	8.70 ± 2.67	0.4404
L - open	26	1970 ± 1060	7.38 ± 1.83	0.0681
Tot/proct	22	3043 ± 2097	6.77 ± 2.65	0.4486
Lap to open	6	2585 ± 516	8.33 ± 1.75	0.5979