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Annual health care costs for fungal diseases exceed $7 billion in US
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Fungal diseases cost the United States health care system more than $7 billion a year, according to a newly published estimate that one CDC researcher said may represent “just the tip of the iceberg.”
Kaitlin Benedict, MPH, and colleagues from the CDC’s Mycotic Diseases Branch noted that fungal infections are largely underdiagnosed and that the true burden may be much higher.
“These are the first estimates that quantify the cost burden of all fungal diseases in the United States,” Benedict told Infectious Disease News of the findings published in Clinical Infectious Diseases. “We hope that these estimates will help draw attention to fungal diseases as a costly and under-recognized health issue.”
Fungal infections, such as those caused by Candida and Aspergillus, can cause a range of illnesses from minor infections of the skin and mucous membranes to severe, life-threatening infections that affect multiple organs, benedict and colleagues wrote. According to the study, diagnosis and treatment are often delayed because symptoms can appear similar to those of other infections, resulting in poor patient outcomes and unnecessary medical expenses.
To estimate the overall fungal disease burden in the U.S., Benedict and colleagues analyzed insurance claims from the Truven Health MarketScan 2014 Research Databases, hospital discharge data from the 2014 Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project National Inpatient Sample and outpatient visit data from the 2005–2014 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. They adjusted all costs to 2017 dollar amounts.
According to their findings, in 2017, fungal diseases cost the health care system more than $7.2 billion. This included the cost of 75,055 hospitalizations and 8,993,230 outpatient visits, totaling an estimated $4.5 billion and $2.6 billion, respectively.
Benedict and colleagues identified 26,735 Candida infections with an estimated total cost of $1.4 billion and 14,820 Aspergillus infections with an estimated total cost of $1.2 billion. These two infections “accounted for the most hospitalizations and the highest total costs of any disease,” they reported.
Dermatophyte infections accounted for 4,981,444 outpatient visits, costing an estimated $802 million. An additional 3,639,037 outpatient visits occurred for noninvasive candidiasis, costing an estimated $1.6 billion, according to the study.
Benedict said that increased awareness about fungal diseases is critical to improving diagnosis and treatment. The researchers urged further research into the public health impact of these diseases.
“Fungal diseases can be expensive to patients and at the national level,” Benedict said. “We also know that these cost estimates are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the true total costs of fungal diseases in the United States because fungal diseases are widely underdiagnosed, and because they do not account for indirect costs related to disability and death.” – by Marley Ghizzone
Disclosure: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.
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