RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is one of the most common causes of chronic liver disease associated with increased liver-related mortality. Additionally, NAFLD could potentially impair health-related quality of life. Although an approved treatment for NAFLD does not exist, a number of new drugs for treatment of NAFLD are being developed. As the efficacy and safety of these regimens are being established, their cost-effectiveness, which requires the use of quality of life metrics and health utility scores to quality-adjusted outcomes, must also be assessed. The aim of this study was to report quality of life and health utilities in patients with NAFLD with and without cirrhosis for future use. METHODS: Patients with NAFLD were seen in an outpatient clinic setting. Each patient had extensive clinical data and completed the Short Form-36 (SF-36 V.1) questionnaire. The SF-6D health utility scores were calculated. RESULTS: There were 89 patients with the spectrum of NAFLD completed the SF-36 questionnaire: 59 with non-cirrhotic NAFLD and 30 with cirrhosis. Patients with NAFLD had significantly lower quality of life and health utility scores than the general population (all p<0.0001). Furthermore, patients with cirrhosis had lower quality of life and utility scores than non-cirrhotic NAFLD patients: SF-6D 0.660±0.107 in non-cirrhotic NAFLD vs 0.551±0.138 in cirrhotic NAFLD (p=0.0003). CONCLUSIONS: Health utilities and quality of life scores are impaired in patients with cirrhotic NAFLD. These values should be used in cost-effectiveness analysis of the upcoming treatment regimens for advanced NAFLD.
RESUMO
New incidents of chronic hepatitis C (CH-C) have stabilized yet the full impact of CH-C is not realized.Assess inpatient mortality and resource utilization for CH-C patients hospitalized in the United States.Adult CH-C patients were identified from The National Inpatient Sample (NIS) 2005 to 2009 database using the International Classification of Disease, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) diagnosis codes (070.51, 070.54, 070.70, 070.71, 070.41, and 070.44) also used to identify comorbidities.324,823 hospitalized CH-C patients were identified. Of these, 13.63% (Nâ=â44,288) were older than 65. The rate of hospitalization for the elderly cohort steadily increased over the study period with Medicare as the payer for the majority (86%). This cohort had higher inpatient charges, approximately a half day longer hospital stay (Pâ<â0.001) and more moderate or severe illness. During the index hospitalization, older CH-C patients were twice more likely to die than the younger age-group (5% versus 2%, Pâ<â0.001). In the adjusted model, older age (OR: 1.02 [95% CI, 1.02-1.03]), severity of illness (OR: 12.06 [95% CI, 10.68-13.62]), and number of diagnoses (OR: 1.10 [95% CI, 1.09-1.11]) were associated with higher in-hospital mortality; severity of illness and having private insurance were significantly associated with charge per hospital stay (Pâ<â0.001).The number of CH-C patients 65 and older increased due to the aging of the baby boomer population. Early treatment of CH-C patients with highly effective, well-tolerated, new anti-HCV regimens may prevent this significant societal burden.
