Reviewing Treatment Patterns, Economic Burden of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

Patients with symptomatic obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) experience a high rate of treatment changes, and as therapy escalates, health care resource use and costs rise. The results, which stem from a claims database study, were published in Cardiology and Therapy.

“Novel effective therapies are needed to improve patient outcomes and reduce the burden of symptomatic obstructive HCM, especially as symptoms and disease progress,” wrote researchers.

The study included 4883 adults with symptomatic obstructive HCM from the IBM MarketScan Commercial and Medicare Supplemental database. Among them, 52.5% were treated with beta blockers, 17.7% with beta blockers and calcium channel blockers, 11.7% with calcium channel blocker monotherapy, and 2.4% with disopyramide. Just over 15% of patients underwent procedures, such as septal reduction therapy, cardioverter-defibrillator implantation, pacemaker implantation, and heart transplantation.

Within 12 months of a treatment’s initiation, 38% of patients had a hospital stay and 34% had an emergency department visit. Total health care costs averaged $53,053 per patient, according to study authors.

Patients undergoing procedures had the highest health care use and costs. Among patients receiving pharmacotherapy, health care use was lowest with beta blockers and highest with disopyramide, researchers found.

Treatment changes occurred in 43.8% of patients on pharmacotherapy.

“One-third of treated patients with symptomatic obstructive HCM required escalating therapies (beta blockers +  calcium channel blockers, disopyramide, or procedures), which were themselves associated with even higher clinical and economic burdens,” researchers wrote. “In addition, a high proportion of patients augmented, switched, or discontinued their medical therapies. These patients experience considerable burden despite existing treatments.”

Reference:
Owens AT, Sutton MB, Gao W, et al. Treatment changes, healthcare resource utilization, and costs among patients with symptomatic obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy: a claims database study. Cardiol Ther. 2022;11(2):249-267. doi:10.1007/s40119-022-00257-7