Updated estimates of healthcare utilization and costs among perinatally HIV-infected children.

OBJECTIVES: This study examined changes in healthcare use among perinatally HIV-infected children and developed new estimates of expected lifetime treatment costs. METHODS: The study analyzed longitudinal medical record data from the Pediatric Spectrum of Disease study on perinatally HIV-infected children enrolled in 6 US sites during 1995 and 2001 for enrollee characteristics including healthcare utilization. For the year 2001, costs were assigned to hospitalization, HIV-related drug usage, and laboratory testing. To estimate lifetime treatment costs based on those categories, median survival times of 9, 15, and 25 years were assumed and average annual healthcare utilization costs were applied to each year of survival. RESULTS: From 1995 to 2001, hospitalization rates fell from 0.67 per child-year to 0.23 per child-year (P < 0.05). In 2001, the average cost of healthcare utilization per child was $12,663, including $2164 for hospitalization, $9505 for HIV-related drugs, and $994 for laboratory tests. The discounted lifetime treatment cost, based on those 3 cost categories, was $113,476 for 9 years of survival, $151,849 for 15 years, and $228,155 for 25 years. CONCLUSIONS: Hospitalizations among perinatally HIV-infected children decreased significantly from 1995 to 2001. Compared with previously published estimates, lifetime treatment costs for children perinatally infected with HIV have remained relatively stable. However, as years of survival increase for this population, lifetime costs also are likely to increase.

Prediction of ischemic stroke risk in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study.

The authors assessed the increase in the predictivity of ischemic stroke (IS) resulting from the addition of nontraditional risk factors and markers of subclinical disease to a basic model containing only traditional risk factors (current smoking, diabetes mellitus, systolic blood pressure, antihypertensive therapy, prior coronary disease, and left ventricular hypertrophy) among 14,685 middle-aged persons in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study. Participants were recruited from four US communities in 1987-1989. Risk prediction scores for IS through 2000 were estimated from Cox models. The ability to predict which persons would develop IS was assessed by means of the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve-the probability that persons with IS had a higher risk score than those without IS. Among 22 nontraditional factors considered, the joint addition of body mass index, waist:hip ratio, high density lipoprotein cholesterol, albumin, von Willebrand factor, alcohol consumption, peripheral arterial disease, and carotid artery wall thickness modestly and statistically significantly improved prediction of future IS over a risk score that included traditional factors. Further improvement was obtained by adding age and race. For women, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve went from 0.79 to 0.83 to 0.84; for men, it went from 0.76 to 0.78 to 0.80. These modest improvements are not enough to influence clinical and public health efforts to reduce the community burden of IS.