Healthcare Utilization and Comorbidity Burden among Children and Young Adults in the United States with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus or Inflammatory Bowel Disease
The Journal of Pediatrics, 05/17/2012
Clinical Article
Karve S et al. – Administrative claims data can be a useful tool for assessing the comparative prevalence and associated resource utilization of rare conditions such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Methods- This was a retrospective analysis of the LifeLink insurance claims database for the years 2000–2006.
- Children (0–15 years) and young adults (16–25 years) with ≥2 diagnosis claims for SLE or IBD were selected as the 2 cohorts of interest.
- For each member of the SLE and IBD cohorts, 2 individuals were randomly selected for a matched comparison group.
- All the analyses were descriptive in nature, CI for differences between means and 2 proportions for measures including health care utilization, comorbidity burden were based on t tests and 2–group tests of proportions.
- The authors identified 278 patients with SLE (prevalence estimate: 7.9 per/100000 population) and 1174 patients with IBD (33.2 per/100000 population).
- The mean annual total medical costs was substantially higher for the SLE (difference: $22223; 95% CI: $14961–$29485) and IBD (difference: $16238; 95% CI: $14395–$18082) cohorts compared with those of the comparator cohort.
- They observed higher comorbidity burdens in the SLE and IBD cohorts than they saw in the comparator cohort.
