Pre-existing Symptoms and Healthcare Utilization Prior to Diagnosis of Neuroendocrine Tumors: A SEER-Medicare Database Study.
Sci Rep
; 8(1): 16863, 2018 11 15.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-30442902
ABSTRACT
The incidence and prevalence of neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) are continually increasing. While it is known that NET symptoms often predate diagnosis, their prevalence and impact on resource utilization and costs are largely unknown. We identified 9,319 elderly patients diagnosed with NETs between 1/2003 and 12/2011 from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER)-Medicare. We examined the patients' conditions potentially associated with NET, resource utilization and costs during the year before diagnosis. We found that NET patients were more likely to have diagnoses of hypertension (63.8% vs. 53.3%), abdominal pain (22.2% vs. 7.6%), heart failure (11.7% vs. 8.0%), diarrhea (5.8% vs. 1.8%), peripheral edema (5.4% vs. 3.8%) and irritable bowel syndrome (1.2% vs. 0.5%) compared to the non-cancer control group. They also had much higher resource utilization including number of outpatient visits (mean 22.1 vs. 17.2), percentage with ER visits (20.9% vs. 11.6%), and hospitalizations (28.4% vs. 17.0%). Similarly, NET patients incurred significantly higher total (mean $14602 vs. $9464), outpatient (mean $5987 vs. $4253), and inpatient costs (mean $8615 vs. $5211). This first population-based study on the pre-diagnosis symptoms and healthcare utilization found that NET patients were more likely to have certain conditions and incur higher resource utilizations and costs.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Patient Acceptance of Health Care
/
Neuroendocrine Tumors
/
SEER Program
Type of study:
Diagnostic_studies
/
Observational_studies
/
Prognostic_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Aspects:
Implementation_research
Limits:
Aged
/
Aged80
/
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
Sci Rep
Year:
2018
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country: