Cost comparison of electrocardiography versus fluoroscopy for central venous line positioning in children1
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Although most central venous lines in children are positioned using fluoroscopy, electrocardiography (ECG) has been shown to be accurate, and avoids unnecessary radiation exposure. We studied whether ECG may also have cost advantages. STUDY DESIGN: All ports and Hickman/Broviac catheters placed during a 2.5-year period were reviewed. Two surgeons routinely used fluoroscopy, and two used ECG. Costs included surgeon and anesthesia fees, operating room use, and fluoroscopy equipment and personnel. RESULTS: There were 287 cases with sufficient data to be included in the study (167 fluoroscopy and 120 ECG). In the ECG group, 12 (10%) were converted to fluoroscopy because an adequate tracing could not be obtained, but they were kept in the ECG group for data analysis. The groups were similar with regard to age, gender, indication, previous catheters, and intraoperative or postoperative complications. Time for surgical placement of the line was not significantly affected by the positioning technique. Ports placed using ECG were less costly than those placed fluoroscopically ($2,880+/-408 versus $3,595+/-357, p<0.001), and the same was true for tunneled external catheters ($2,249 +/- 435 versus $2,923+/-350, p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The ECG technique was less costly than fluoroscopy, despite a 10% conversion rate. At our center, the savings were approximately $700 per procedure. Because operating room time used is similar, the additional cost of fluoroscopy can be attributed to the need for x-ray equipment and personnel.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.023 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".