Physician Update: AHA Special Edition
Read more articles from our most relevant research presented at the 2024 AHA Scientific Sessions.
Clinical Heart and Vascular Center
Costs and Health Care Resource Utilization in Transthyretin Amyloid Cardiomyopathy Exceeds that of Non-Amyloid Heart Failure
By Justin L. Grodin, M.D., M.P.H.
Associate Professor of Internal Medicine
Medical Director, Internal Medicine Clinical Trials Unit
Transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM) is a relentlessly progressive disease characterized by exercise intolerance, worsening heart failure (HF), and premature death. Although the prevalence of ATTR-CM is not well-characterized due to what are likely high rates of misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis, estimates suggest that possibly 150,000 people in the U.S. have HF caused by ATTR-CM. Data from Europe and Asia suggest ATTR-CM is associated with a substantial burden to health care systems, but whether this translates to the U.S. has not been established. To address this knowledge gap, we sought to compare all-cause and cardiovascular (CV)-related health care resource utilization (HCRU) costs between patients with ATTR-CM and patients with non-amyloid HF in the in the U.S. using real-world medical and pharmacy claims data.
At #AHA24, we presented data from a nested case-control study of 4,751 patients with ATTR-CM who were propensity-score matched to 4,751 patients with non-amyloid HF from the Optumâ Clinformaticsâ Data Mart database (Jan. 2016-Sept. 2023) with minimum of two years of continuous enrollment. We compared all-cause and CV hospitalization rates, length of stay (LOS), days hospitalized annually per patient, total costs per hospitalization, and annual hospitalization costs between these two groups.
“These observations suggest that ATTR-CM is associated with an equal or greater per-patient burden on the U.S. health care system than non-amyloid HF.”
Compared to patients with non-amyloid HF, patients with ATTR-CM had more frequent hospitalizations, longer LOS, more days hospitalized annually per patient, and higher annual hospitalization costs per patient for both all-cause and CV-related hospitalizations. These observations suggest that ATTR-CM is associated with an equal or greater per-patient burden on the U.S. health care system than non-amyloid HF. Further, they highlight the burden of disease and resource utilization that may be addressed by implementing novel disease-specific management strategies in patients with ATTR-CM.
