Preventing Surgical Site Hematoma Using Topical with or Without Intravenous Tranexamic Acid in Lumbosacral Surgery: A Quality Improvement Project

Abstract

Background: Postoperative surgical site hematoma (SSH) following lumbosacral surgery carries significant morbidity and increased length of stay (LOS). Intravenous tranexamic acid (ivTXA) has been shown to reduce SSH rate. Topical TXA (tTXA) could benefit patients with contraindications to ivTXA. However, this has not been widely studied. We sought to demonstrate that a quality improvement (QI) protocol using tTXA with/without ivTXA in patients undergoing elective open and minimally invasive lumbosacral surgery could decrease the SSH rate and LOS with no increase in associated complications.

Methods: A retrospective chart review for July 2018-June 2019 demonstrated our preimplementation baseline SSH rate. We conducted interdisciplinary meetings to develop standardized institutional measures and perioperative tTXA administration protocol. The primary outcome was SSH necessitating evacuation. The secondary outcome was LOS and TXA-related complications. The postimplementation data were collected prospectively from July 2020-October 2020. Univariate analysis was used to compare preimplementation and postimplementation cohorts. We considered a P-value <0.05 significant.

Results: Comparing consecutive lumbosacral surgical patients in pre- (219 patients) and postimplementation (258 patients), the postimplementation group demonstrated a significantly reduced rate of SSH requiring evacuation (0.38% vs. 3.3%, P < 0.001), significantly increased tTXA utilization (86.0% vs. 9.6%, P < 0.001), significantly lower incidence of SSH in tTXA patients (0.45% vs. 4.8%, P = 0.037), and significantly decreased LOS (3.4 ± 2.5 vs. 3.1 ± 2.7, P = 0.003). There were no complications attributable to TXA use.

Conclusions: Our Quality Improvement (QI) project successfully increased compliance with the use of tTXA. Post-implementation rate of SSH requiring evacuation and LOS was significantly lowered with no associated complications.

Keywords: Complications; Hematoma; Quality improvement; Spine surgery; Topical tranexamic acid.