Hospital costs and cosmetic outcome of benign and high-risk breast lesions managed by vacuum assisted excision versus surgical excision

Background: Benign and high-risk breast lesions can be excised when symptomatic or for diagnotisc purposes. Although vacuum assisted excision (VAE) is a safe and effective alternative to surgical excision(SE), most hospitals still use SE for the management of benign and high risk breast lesions. To evaluate the health care benefit of VAE, hospital costs and cosmetic outcome after VAE were compared to SE. Additionally, hospital costs of the periods before and after implementation of VAE were compared.