The Treasury

Global Navigation

Personal tools

Treasury
Publication

Investigating Health Technology Diffusion in New Zealand - How Does it Spread and Who Stands to Gain? - WP 06/05

4  The Big Picture – Results from the Entire Sample (Stents, Angioplasty and CABG)

4.1.1  After their introduction in 1995, the use of stents increased rapidly but the number of admissions for a CABG also continued to rise.

The data in Table 3 is reproduced in Figure 1 of Section 2. Notably, there is a sharp increase in the use of stents after their introduction in 1995 but a steady increase in the number of admissions for a CABG. This is consistent with the hypothesis that bypasses are now being performed on patients who may not have received that treatment a decade ago. Advances in other areas of technology such as anaesthetics have enabled other groups to safely undergo this procedure.

Table 3 – No. of Admissions for Stents, Angioplasty and Bypass Grafts
Year Stents PTCA + Stents PTCA CABG
1990     339 643
1991     702 1257
1992     797 1162
1993     1022 1274
1994     1131 1206
1995 9 217 1179 1414
1996 154 427 917 1378
1997 999 152 674 1606
1998 1348 158 426 1680
1999 1989 130 371 1760
2000 2296 64 393 1962
2001 2717 65 347 1964
2002 2933 59 308 1971
2003 3325 58 203 1865
2004 1817 25 91 820

4.1.2  The average age of patients increased across the period and their length of stay in hospital reduced…

Table 4 – Average Age of All Admissions for Cardiac Procedures between 1990 and 2004

– Average Age of All Admissions for Cardiac Procedures between 1990 and 2004
  Average Age Length of Stay
1990 59.89 11.78
1991 60.19 11.08
1992 60.39 10.43
1993 60.88 9.89
1994 60.88 9.47
1995 61.21 8.85
1996 61.49 8.72
1997 62.47 8.23
1998 62.35 8.16
1999 62.51 7.53
2000 62.66 7.42
2001 63.12 6.80
2002 63.13 6.70
2003 63.25 6.61
2004 63.02 6.59

Table 4 is supportive of the hypothesis that more risky patients are being treated. The table shows very broadly the average age of patients undergoing any of the procedures across the period. In a period of 14 years this average has risen by just under 4 years. Alongside this, the average length of stay in hospitals has dropped from 11.8 days in 1990 to 6.6 days in 2004.

Page top