[Estimating the costs of health care for patients infected with the human immunodeficiency virus in a university hospital in Catalonia].

BACKGROUND

To estimate the use of resources and costs of health care to patients infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

METHODS

Prospective study in university hospital in Catalonia including 166 patients. AIDS was defined following 1987 criteria of the Centers for Disease Control. AIDS phase was divided into three grades according to the evolutive course: AIDS grade I, II and III. Resources/costs were calculated in function of the degree of disease, transmission mode and demographic variants.

RESULTS

The mean cost per patient/year (PY) was 1,571,900 pesetas, ranging from 88,700 for the asymptomatic phase and 2,561,000 per AIDS phase. Within the AIDS phase costs ranged from 1,593,317 for AIDS grade I to 4,903,183 for grade III. This increase was due to differences in hospitalization days for PY (up to 12.4 days in pre-AIDS phases, 45.8 for AIDS phase I and 119.4 for AIDS phase III) and days in day-hospital per PY (38.1 days for AIDS grade III). Parenteral drug abusers (PDA) had a PY cost 42% lower than that corresponding to sexually infected patients.

CONCLUSIONS

Health care costs per PY of HIV infected patients increase with disease progression, which relates to the increase in hospitalization days and day-hospital hospitalization that occurs in the advanced phases of the disease. Our results suggest that health care to PDA is cheaper than that for sexually infected patients.