Objective: To quantify the economic costs and examine the most common co-morbidities of patients with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) in the United States.

Background: PSP is a rare and fast progressive neuro-degenerative disorder with no approved treatment. It is difficult to diagnose and often results in debilitating motor, cognitive, and functional decline. It can lead to significant costs through the need for comprehensive medical care. However, little is known about the direct costs incurred by PSP patients to the healthcare system in the US.

Methods: PSP patients (ICD 10 code G23.1) with continuous eligibility 12 month prior to the diagnosis were identified from the Truven MarketScan database from 1/1/2013-3/31/2017. Annual healthcare costs including inpatient, outpatient, ER and pharmacy cost were calculated for the PSP patients during the year prior to the diagnosis. In addition, the most common comorbidities among PSP patients were also evaluated. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the findings.

Results: The study included 576 PSP patients with mean age of 71.9 years old and 45.7% being female. During the year prior to the diagnosis, 195 (33.9%) patients had at least one inpatient admission with an average length of stay of 10.5 days. 301 (52.3%) patients had at least one ER visit. The mean annual total cost was $38,975, with the majority (88%) being medical care costs ($34,290) and the remaining being pharmacy costs ($4,685). Within medical care costs, $13,001 was incurred for inpatient admission, $1,671 for ER, $12,154 for outpatient visits and $7,462 for other costs. The most common comorbidities included hypertension (72.6%), fatigue (38.7%), hyperlipidemia (37.0%), dysphagia (28.8%), type 2 diabetes (27.3%), muscle weakness (24.7%), cough (23.8%), unspecified injury (23.8%), urinary tract infection (23.4%), shortness of breath (22.6%), major depressive disorder (22.4%) and dementia (22.0%).

Conclusions: This study showed that there was significant amount of health resource utilization and associated economic burden among PSP patients in the US. In addition, PSP patients lived with a considerable number of comorbidities. Future studies are needed to further examine the additional costs which are not covered in the current study, such as costs for supportive care provided by institutions or caregivers to get a more thorough understanding of the cost burden for PSP.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/burden-among-patients-with-progressive-supranuclear-palsy/