Glaucoma costs increase with disease severity

DURHAM, N.C. — The yearly cost of caring for glaucoma increases incrementally as the disease progresses, growing from around $600 per year after initial diagnosis to upwards of $2,500 in later stages of the disease, researchers at Duke University have found.

“It is imperative that patients with glaucoma be well-monitored for changes in their disease,” said Paul P. Lee, MD, in a press release from Duke University Eye Center. “Our results prove what we’ve thought for a long time — that the disease gets more expensive as it worsens.”

Researchers at Duke analyzed records of 151 patients selected randomly from 12 sites in the United States, classifying them according to the severity of each individual’s glaucoma. Patients had varying levels of disease, from ocular hypertension to end-stage disease.

The researchers combined resource consumption numbers from specialist surveys with publicly available economic data to estimate “patient-level direct costs from the payer perspective.”

Visits to ophthalmologists, glaucoma surgeries and medication use all increased as the disease continued to progress. Patients deemed glaucoma suspects or those with early-stage disease used about $623 per year in health care resources. Patients with end-stage glaucoma used $2,511 per year in health care resources. Medications comprised 24% to 61% of the costs, the researchers said.

“We know that for chronic diseases such as glaucoma, people don’t use their medications as frequently as recommended by their physician,” Dr. Lee said in the press release.

While the researchers took that into account, “we suspect that the true costs of medication could be even greater than we found,” he said, because the estimates were based on wholesale costs, which are typically lower than what the average consumer pays.

The study is published in the January issue of Archives of Ophthalmology.