Enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) programs are being used increasingly in microvascular breast reconstruction. However, it is unclear as to what extent the benefits outweigh the costs. We hypothesized that an ERAS pathway for microvascular breast reconstruction would be cost-effective relative to the standard of care.

A decision-analytic model was made incorporating clinically relevant health states after microvascular breast reconstruction with ERAS vs standard of care. Probabilities and utility scores were abstracted from published sources, and a third-party payer perspective was adopted. Time-driven activity-based costing was used to map and estimate costs attributed to ERAS. Sensitivity analyses were performed to examine the robustness of the results.

The results of 5 studies, totaling 986 patients, were pooled to generate health state probabilities. ERAS was found to be dominant, being both less expensive and more effective than standard of care. On sensitivity analysis, ERAS becomes cost-ineffective (incremental cost-utility ratio > $50,000/quality-adjusted life year) at an amount > $19,336.75. Length of stay would have to be reduced from 5.96 days to 3.36 days for standard of care to become cost-effective. Monte-Carlo analysis demonstrated ERAS to be the more cost-effective option across a range of willingness-to-pay values.

Despite the increased medication and personnel costs attributed to ERAS, it is less costly overall and associated with superior outcomes compared with standard of care. These findings lend additional support to the value of ERAS implementation in microvascular breast reconstruction. Time-driven activity-based costing provides granular estimates and are useful in quality-improvement initiatives.