Attendance-related Healthcare Resource Utilisation and Costs in Patients With Brugada Syndrome in Hong Kong: A Retrospective Cohort Study

摘要

Understanding health care resource utilisa-tion and its associated costs are important for identify-ing areas of improvement regarding resource allocations. However, there is limited research explor-ing this issue in the setting of Brugada syndrome (BrS).This was a retrospective territory-wide study of BrS patients from Hong Kong. Healthcare resource utilisation for accident and emergency (A&E), inpa-tient and specialist outpatient attendances were analyzed over a 19-year period, with their associated costs presented in US dollars. A total of 507 BrS patients with a mean presentation age of 49.9 +/- 16.3 years old were included. Of these, 384 patients displayed spontaneous type 1 electrocardiographic (ECG) Brugada pattern and 77 patients had presented with ventricular tachycardia/ventricular fibrillation (VT/VF). At the individual patient level, the median annualized costs were $110 (52-224) at the (A & E) set-ting, $6812 (1982-32414) at the inpatient setting and $557 (326-1001) for specialist outpatient attendances. Patients with initial VT/VF presentation had overall greater costs in inpatient ($20161 [9147-189215] vs $5290 [1613-24937],P < 0.0001) and specialist outpa-tient setting ($776 [438-1076] vs $542 [293-972], P = 0.015) compared to those who did not present VT. In addition, patients without Type 1 ECG pattern had greater median costs in the specialist outpatient setting ($7036 [3136-14378] vs $4895 [2409-10554],p=0.019). There is a greater health care demand in the inpatient and specialist outpatient settings for BrS patients. The most expensive attendance type was inpatient setting stay at $6812 per year. The total median annualized cost of BrS patients without VT/VF presentation was 78% lower compared to patients with VT/VF presen-tation. (Curr Probl Cardiol 2023;48:101513.)

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