BCN HEALTH publishes a study evaluating the influence of disease severity on healthcare costs among hospitalized NAFLD/NASH patients in Spain

BCN HEALTH has published the study ‘Disease severity predicts higher healthcare costs among hospitalized nonalcoholic fatty liver disease/nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NAFLD/NASH) patients in Spain’ in the journal ‘Medicine’, an international journal interested in publishing any original research across a broad spectrum of medical scientific disciplines and sub-specialties.

BCN HEALTH conducted a retrospective study based on the records of patients hospitalized due to NAFLD/NASH and treated in Spanish public and private hospitals between January of 2006 and April of 2017. Patients were followed from index date until the earliest of: 6 months, disease progression, end of coverage, death, or end of study. The baseline or pre-index period was defined as the 6-month interval immediately preceding the index date. The objective of this study was to examine the impact of liver disease severity, the comorbidities burden, and healthcare resource utilization and associated costs of advanced liver diseases in Spain. 

The files obtained corresponded to 8,205 patients diagnosed with NAFLD/NASH eligible after applying inclusion and exclusion criteria. The mean age was 58.4 and the 54% were male. Five subgroups of patients were analyzed according to disease severity: NAFLD/NASH non-progressors, compensated cirrhosis (CC), decompensated cirrhosis (DCC), hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and liver transplant (LT). From the total of 8,205 patients, 5,984 (72.9%) were non-progressors, 139 (1.7%) progressed to CC, 2,028 (24.7%) to DCC, 115 (1.4%) to LT, and 61 (0.7%) to HCC. The most common comorbidities were hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and hyperlipidemia. The prevalence of comorbid health conditions was higher in patients with advanced liver diseases compared with those in the NAFLD/NASH non-progressors group.

Average length of stay (LOS) increased significantly from 5.9 days in the pre-index period to 8.3 days in the post-index period as did all-cause costs (€3,422 to €5,008), with significantly longer LOS and costs in patients with increasing disease severity. Mean costs increased significantly from pre-index to post-index period within each of the disease severity groups.  

More information can be found at https://doi.org/10.1097/md.0000000000023506.