Abstract
We sought to determine the most cost-effective treatment for patients with newly diagnosed neovascular macular degeneration: monthly or as-needed bevacizumab injections, or monthly or as-needed ranibizumab injections. Cost-effectiveness analysis. Hypothetical cohort of 80-year-old patients with newly diagnosed neovascular macular degeneration. Using a mathematical model with a 20-year time horizon, we compared the incremental cost-effectiveness of treating a hypothetical cohort of 80-year-old patients with newly diagnosed neovascular macular degeneration using monthly bevacizumab, as-needed bevacizumab, monthly ranibizumab, or as-needed ranibizumab. Data came from the Comparison of Age-related macular degeneration Treatment Trial (CATT), the Medicare Fee Schedule, and the medical literature. Costs, quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), and incremental costs per QALY gained. Compared with as-needed bevacizumab, the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of monthly bevacizumab is $24,2 357/QALY. Monthly ranibizumab gains an additional 0.02 QALYs versus monthly bevacizumab at an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of >$10 million/QALY. As-needed ranibizumab was dominated by monthly bevacizumab, meaning it was more costly and less effective. In sensitivity analyses assuming a willingness to pay of $100,000/QALY, the annual risk of serious vascular events would have to be ≥2.5 times higher with bevacizumab than that observed in the CATT trial for as-needed ranibizumab to have an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of <$100,000/QALY. In another sensitivity analysis, even if every patient receiving bevacizumab experienced declining vision by 1 category (e.g., from 20/25-20/40 to 20/50-20/80) after 2 years but every patient receiving ranibizumab retained their vision level, as-needed ranibizumab would have an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of $97,340/QALY. Even after considering the potential for differences in risks of serious adverse events and therapeutic effectiveness, bevacizumab confers considerably greater value than ranibizumab for the treatment of neovascular macular degeneration.
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