Estimation of average diagnosis and treatment costs of hepatitis C

AIM The objective of this study was to estimate the average cost of diagnosis and treatment of hepatitis C among patients based on their treatment regime, during the one course of treatment and six-month after stopping that. BACKGROUND Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major cause of liver-related morbidity and mortality worldwide and a major public health problem. PATIENTS AND METHODS All data for this cross-sectional study were collected from medical records of 200 patients with hepatitis C, who referred to a private gastroenterology clinic between years 2005 through 2009. Information related to the 200 patients was extracted from their medical records and finally, 77 patients of them, who their treatment was not interfering with any other disease entered in this study. Therefore diagnosis and treatment costs of these patients were calculated. Attributable costs were reported as purchasing power parity dollars (PPP$). RESULTS Mean costs of diagnosis and treatment in one course of treatment and six month after that with standard interferon plus ribavirin (INF-RBV) exceeds 3,850 PPP$ and for patients who treated with peg-interferon plus ribavirin (PEG-RIBV) was 16,494 PPP$. Also in both types of treatment, medication cost was found to be a dominant cost component. CONCLUSION Hepatitis C represents a very important and potentially costly disease to managed care organizations. Patients with this disease require expensive drug therapies and consume significant health care resources.