With the introduction of new and advanced techniques, the healthcare costs have also increased progressively. Limited budget allocation for health in developing nations makes it difficult to embrace these advancements. One of the major expenditures in a hospital has been attributed to anaesthetic procedures. It thus becomes challenging for the anesthesiologist to use newer techniques that help maintain the standards of patient safety yet are cost effective in routine use.

The market for surgery and anaesthesia does not follow conventional supply/ demand and cost/quality equilibrium laws. This is known as market failure, a situation that calls for special strategies for controlling costs and assessing tradeoffs. This has led to work force modifications to determine if clinical practice is associated with best outcome result at a reasonable cost – a concept termed value based anaesthesia care.

In economic terms, it can be evaluated by cost identification (minimization) analysis which involves comparison of acquisition costs of various anaesthesia techniques (is least expensive) providing the desired outcome.

Another method of minimizing costs is to reduce wastage, that is, drug is loaded but not used for the patient and is discarded at the end of the procedure. Studies illustrate that using drugs judiciously will eventually reduce costs but fail to elucidate the techniques associated with less wastage.

Although studies have compared different anaesthetic techniques (eg spinal vs general anaesthesia) for a particular surgery with respect to their cost efficacy, patient safety and side effects, or two different general anaesthetic techniques (high flow and low flow inhalational anaesthesia with one agent or low flow anaesthesia with total intravenous anaesthesia), a comprehensive analysis of cost identification for general anaesthesia is lacking.