Hospital costs and cosmetic outcome of benign and high-risk breast lesions managed by vacuum-assisted excision versus surgical excision

Although vacuum-assisted excision (VAE) is a safe and effective alternative to surgical excision (SE), the latter is most commonly used for the management of benign and high-risk breast lesions. To evaluate the healthcare benefit of VAE, hospital costs and cosmetic outcome after VAE were compared to SE. Additionally, the impact of VAE implementation on hospital costs was investigated. This was a single-centre retrospective cohort study with two cohorts: "VAE" and "SE". All patients with a benign or high-risk lesion excised by VAE or SE from January 2016 up to December 2019 were included. Cosmetic outcome was measured with the BCTOS-cosmetic subscale, and hospital costs were presented as mean (SD) and median (IQR). During the study period, 258 patients with 295 excised lesions were included. The initial procedure was VAE in 102 patients and SE in 156 patients. Hospital costs after (median € 2324) were significantly lower than before (median € 3,144) implementation of VAE (mean difference € 1,004, < 0.001), most likely attributable to the lower costs for patients treated with VAE (mean difference € 1,979, < 0.001). Mean cosmetic outcome was comparable between VAE (median 1.35) and SE (median 1.44, = 0.802). Implementing VAE as an alternative treatment option for benign and high-risk breast lesions resulted in a large decrease in hospital costs but a cosmetic benefit of VAE could not be demonstrated in this retrospective study. Costs associated with the complete patient pathway were included and not only VAE was compared to SE but also the before cohort was compared to the after cohort to demonstrate the benefit of VAE implementation in clinical practice. Additionally, cosmetic outcome was compared between VAE and SE using patient reported outcome measures.