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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Planetary Health
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1386826
This article is part of the Research Topic The Relationship Between Health and Environment Under the Lens of Climate Change: Insights for Policy Makers View all 9 articles

Healthcare-related carbon footprinting -Lower impact of a coronary stenting compared to a coronary surgery pathway

Provisionally accepted
Fabian Sack Fabian Sack 1*Amanda Irwin Amanda Irwin 1Raymond Van Der Zalm Raymond Van Der Zalm 1Loraine Ho Loraine Ho 2Danielle J. Celermajer Danielle J. Celermajer 1David S. Celermajer David S. Celermajer 1
  • 1 The University of Sydney, Darlington, Australia
  • 2 Sydney Local Health District, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Healthcare is a major generator of greenhouse gases, so consideration of this contribution to climate change needs to be quantified in ways that can inform models of care. Given the availability of activity-based financial data, environmentally-extended input-output (EEIO) analysis can be employed to calculate systemic carbon footprints for healthcare activities, allowing comparison of different patient care pathways. We thus quantified and compared the carbon footprint of two common care pathways for patients with stable coronary artery disease, with similar clinical outcomes: coronary stenting and coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG). Healthcare cost data for these two pathways were disaggregated and the carbon footprint associated with this expenditure was calculated by connecting the flow of money within the economy to the greenhouse gases emitted to support the full range of associated activities. The systemic carbon footprint associated with an average stable patient CABG pathway, at a large tertiary referral hospital in Sydney, Australia in 2021-22, was 11.5 tonnes CO2-e, 4.9 times greater than the 2.4 tonnes CO2-e footprint of an average comparable stenting pathway.These data suggest that a stenting pathway for stable coronary disease should be preferred on environmental grounds and introduces EEIO analysis as a practical tool to assist in health-care related carbon footprinting.

    Keywords: Footprint, carbon emissions, greenhouse gases, Patient care pathway, sustainability, Stenting, bypass surgery, input-output analysis

    Received: 16 Feb 2024; Accepted: 01 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Sack, Irwin, Van Der Zalm, Ho, Celermajer and Celermajer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Fabian Sack, The University of Sydney, Darlington, Australia

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.