• André Luis Ferreira Azeredo-Da-Silva, Silvana Perini, Pedro Henrique Rigotti Soares, and Carisi Anne Polaczyk.
• Graduate Program in Epidemiology, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil; Porto Alegre Clinical Hospital, Porto Alegre, Brazil; National Institute for Health Technology Assessment (INCT/IATS-Brazil), Porto Alegre, Brazil. Electronic address: andre@htanalyze.com.
• Value Health. 2016 Mar 1; 19 (2): 286-95.

BackgroundDedicated units for the care of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) have been submitted to economic evaluations; however, the results have not been systematically presented.ObjectiveTo identify and summarize economic outcomes of studies on hospital units dedicated to the initial care of patients with suspected or confirmed ACS.MethodsA systematic review of literature to identify economic evaluations of chest pain unit (CPU), coronary care unit (CCU), or equivalent units was done. Two search strategies were used: the first one to identify economic evaluations irrespective of study design, and the second one to identify randomized clinical trials that reported economic outcomes. The following databases were searched: MEDLINE, EMBASE, CENTRAL, and National Health Service (NHS)Economic Evaluation Database. Data extraction was performed by two independent reviewers. Costs were inflated to 2012 values.ResultsSearch strategies retrieved five partial economic evaluations based on observational studies, six randomized clinical trials that reported economic outcomes, and five model-based economic evaluations. Overall, cost estimates based on observational studies and randomized clinical trials reported statistically significant cost savings of more than 50% with the adoption of CPU care instead of routine hospitalization or CCU care for suspected low-to-intermediate risk patients with ACS (median per-patient cost US $1,969.89; range US $1,002.12-13,799.15). Model-based economic evaluations reported incremental cost-effectiveness ratios below US $ 50,000/quality-adjusted life-year for all comparisons between intermediate care unit, CPU, or CCU with routine hospital admissions. This finding was sensible to myocardial infarction probability.ConclusionsPublished economic evaluations indicate that more intensive care is likely to be cost-effective in comparison to routine hospital admission for patients with suspected ACS.Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Inc.

26 keywords...

hide…