Greenhouse gas reduction in anaesthesia practice: a departmental environmental strategy

BMJ Open Quality

article

Kerstin Wyssusek¹  Ka Lo Chan¹  Gerard Eames¹  Yasmin Whately¹ 

[1] Department of Anaesthesia and Perioperative Medicine , Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital;Faculty of Medicine , The University of Queensland

关键词: Anaesthesia;    Quality improvement;    Healthcare quality improvement;    Education;   

DOI  :  10.1136/bmjoq-2022-001867

学科分类：药学

来源: BMJ Publishing Group

【 摘 要 】

Sustainability interventions were implemented at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital (RBWH) following identification of inhaled anaesthetic gases as a target for reducing medical carbon emissions. This quality improvement study assessed and evaluated the impact of sustainability interventions on the environmental and financial cost of inhaled anaesthetic gas use in order to guide future initiatives and research in reducing carbon emissions from healthcare practice.Ethical exemption was granted from the RBWH Research Ethics Committee (EX/2021/QRBW/76078). Usage (bottles) and expenditure for desflurane and sevoflurane from January 2016 to December 2021 were obtained. Global warming potential and carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) were used to report environmental impact of volatile agents. Methods to estimate this were performed in Excel based on Campbell and Pierce methodology. An Environmental Protection Agency greenhouse gas equivalency calculator was used to convert CO2e to equivalent petrol carbon emissions and kilometres travelled by a typical passenger vehicle.The total number of bottles of sevoflurane and desflurane purchased between January 2016 and December 2021 decreased by 34.76% from 1991 to 1299. The number of desflurane bottles purchased decreased by 95.63% from 800 to 35 bottles. The number of sevoflurane bottles purchased increased by 6.13% from 1191 bottles to 1264 bottles. This was achieved by implementing quality improvement interventions such as staff education of desflurane-sparing practices, distribution of posters and progressive removal of desflurane from operating theatres. Total carbon emission from volatile anaesthetics equalled 2326 tonnes CO2e. Combined desflurane and sevoflurane emissions decreased by 87.88%. In 2016, desflurane made up 92.39% of the annual CO2e, which steadily decreased to 33.36% in 2021. Combined sevoflurane and desflurane usage costs decreased by 58.33%.Substantial reductions in carbon emissions from volatile anaesthetics demonstrate the significant degree to which environmentally sustainable practices have been implemented. Applying desflurane-sparing practice can heavily limit anaesthetic drug expenditure and contribution to environmental waste. This is important given the global health sector’s challenge to optimise patient outcomes in the face of global climate change crisis.AnaesthesiaQuality improvementHealthcare quality improvementEducationData availability statementAll data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as supplemental information.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

【 授权许可】

CC BY-NC|CC BY|CC BY-NC-ND