Researchers from the department of radiology at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, thought they could shorten their facility’s standard recovery time for outpatient parenchymal liver biopsies from three hours to two hours—so they put it to the test. The two radiologists performed a quality improvement project, publishing their findings in the Journal of the American College of Radiology.
“Our aim was to assess whether the outpatient liver biopsy recovery period could be decreased without negatively affecting patient comfort or safety,” wrote authors Neema J. Patel, MD, and Andrew W. Bowman, MD, PhD, of the department of radiology at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.
Patel and Bowman changed the facility’s recovery time for parenchymal liver biopsies from three hours to two hours in November 2015, comparing data from before and after the move. Preintervention data came from Jan. 1, 2012, to Dec. 31, 2014, while postintervention came from Dec. 1, 2015, to May 31, 2017.
Overall, the number of major complications following liver biopsies was “extremely low” both preintervention (0.9 percent) and postintervention (1.1 percent).
“Our results in this quality initiative confirmed that postbiopsy recovery time can be decreased from three to two hours without a substantial rise in complication rate or other negative impact on patient safety or comfort,” the authors wrote.
Patel and Bowman noted that none of the postintervention complications—major or minor—would have presented during the recovery time if it had still been the original duration of three hours.
“Postintervention major complications included two cases of bacteremia and two cases of biliary leak in posttransplantation patients secondary to dehiscent bile duct anastomoses,” the authors wrote. “None of these patients presented during the postbiopsy recovery time; the earliest presentation for any of these major complications was the day after the biopsy. Of the five postintervention minor complications, none presented during the postbiopsy recovery period. The earliest minor complication presentation occurred one day after the biopsy.”
Patel and Bowman concluded that their “modest reduction” saved an estimated hundreds of hours of recovery time annually and improved procedural capacity by 20 percent “without increasing either staff or other resources.”
Michael has more than 16 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.