The cost-effectiveness and budget impact of intravenous versus oral proton pump inhibitors in peptic ulcer hemorrhage.

BACKGROUND & AIMS: The most cost-effective route of administering proton pump inhibitor (PPI) therapy in peptic ulcer hemorrhage remains uncertain. Oral (PO) PPI therapy may be less effective than intravenous (IV) PPI therapy, but is less expensive and does not mandate a 72-hour posthemostasis hospital stay to complete a full therapeutic course. Because there are currently no published head-to-head clinical trials comparing IV vs PO PPIs, we used decision analysis with budget impact modeling to measure the clinical and economic outcomes of these competing modes of administration.

METHODS

We compared 3 postendoscopic strategies for high-risk peptic ulcer hemorrhage: (1) PO PPI therapy, (2) IV PPI therapy, and (3) IV histamine(2) receptor antagonist therapy. The primary outcomes were cost per quality-adjusted life-year gained, and per-member per-month cost in a hypothetical managed care organization with 1,000,000 covered lives.

RESULTS

Compared with the PPI strategies, the histamine(2) receptor antagonist strategy was more expensive and less effective. Of the 2 PPI strategies, using IV instead of PO PPI cost an incremental 708,735 US dollars per year to gain 1 additional quality-adjusted life-year. Substituting IV in lieu of PO PPI cost each member 2.86 US dollars per month to subsidize. The IV PPI strategy became dominant when the rebleed rate with PO PPIs exceeded 24% (base case = 13%), and when the hospital stay on IV PPIs decreased to less than 72 hours.

CONCLUSIONS

The higher effectiveness of IV PPI therapy may not offset its increased costs vs PO PPI therapy in ulcer hemorrhage. The managed care budget impact of IV PPIs exceeds most benchmarks.