Health services researchCost analysis of narrowband UVB phototherapy in psoriasis☆
Section snippets
Background
St James's Hospital is a 700-bed university hospital in Dublin, Ireland. An outpatient department within the hospital provides the focus for outpatient treatment of patients with a primary diagnosis of psoriasis. Narrowband UVB treatment was initiated in our outpatient department in September 1998. Initially there was one 7001-UV Waldman (Waldman GmbH & Co, Villingen-Schwenningen, Germany) in use; a second unit was added in March 2000. A minimal erythema dose is determined in the majority of
Methods
The annual cost to the hospital of delivering a TL-01 phototherapy service to the patients who were included in the study were calculated using standard pharmacoeconomic microcosting methods.6, 7
The costs consisted of the following:
- 1.
Operational costs of the phototherapy department were calculated on the basis of percentage of hospital size in square feet and, therefore, the percentage of total annual expenditure from the hospital budget. The suite is 625 sq ft, which is 0.071% of total hospital
Demographic data
In all, 165 patients attended for narrowband UVB therapy for psoriasis at our institution during the 2-year period; 95 female and 70 male patients. Of these patients, 78 (47%) had undergone previous phototherapy. Of the patients, 43 (26%) had previous broadband UVB therapy, 31 (19%) had previous psoralen-UVA therapy, and 37 (22%) had previous TL-01 treatment.
During the 2-year period, the range of TL-01 exposures varied between 3 and 64 (this included patients who required more than 1 course
Discussion
Economic data are valuable to supplement clinical decisions and to weigh the costs and benefits of different therapeutic measures. There are minimal data available on the costs of psoriasis treatments in general and specifically on the costs of phototherapy and photochemotherapy. It is well documented that the economic impact of psoriasis varies according to the severity of disease, but few data are available on the absolute and real costs of psoriasis treatments.2, 3, 4, 5 This study
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Funding sources: None.
Conflicts of interest: None identified.