OBJECTIVES:

PAD is mainly caused by atherosclerosis that reduces blood flow to the limbs. Prosthetic vascular grafts are frequently used in lower limb bypass procedures in occluded or stenosed arteries. This study reviewed the hospital resource use reported in published literature for below-knee surgical bypass procedures using the GORE^® PROPATEN^® Vascular Graft with heparin end-point covalent bond.

METHODS:

A literature review of studies on GORE^® PROPATEN^® Vascular Graft with heparin end-point covalent bond was conducted. Articles were included if they were on below-knee bypass procedures on critical limb ischemia patients, published after 2010 and reported any type of hospital resource use e.g., hospital stay. Registries were excluded due to high risk of bias. Data was extracted and pooled using a weighted average method.

RESULTS:

11 articles were reviewed and there were four articles in the final selection. Three studies reported hospital stay (n = 323 patients) and four studies reported operating room time for the bypass procedure (n = 340 patients). No other hospital resource use was reported. For below-knee surgical bypass procedures using the GORE^® PROPATEN^® Vascular Graft with heparin end-point covalent bond, the weighted average hospital stay was 6.6 days (per patient) and operating room time was 138 minutes (per patient).

CONCLUSIONS:

Clinical outcomes such as patency and complications are consistently reported in studies. Outcomes on hospital resource use are not consistently reported and are limited to hospital stay and operating room time. More reporting on hospital resources e.g., intensive care use, blood products and consumables used in treatment of complications, can assist decision makers understand the broader costs of the procedure in the patient treatment pathway.