Abstract

BackgroundDengue, an arboviral disease, is a public health problem in tropical and subtropical regions worldwide. In Brazil, epidemics have become increasingly important, with increases in the number of hospitalizations and the costs associated with the disease. This study aimed to describe the direct costs of hospitalized dengue cases, the financial impact of admissions and the use of blood products where current protocols for disease management were not followed.Methods and ResultsTo analyze the direct costs of dengue illness and platelet transfusion in Brazil based on the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, we conducted a retrospective cross-sectional census study on hospitalized dengue patients in the public and private Brazilian health systems in Dourados City, Mato Grosso do Sul State, Brazil. The analysis involved cases that occurred from January through December during the 2010 outbreak. In total, we examined 8,226 mandatorily reported suspected dengue cases involving 507 hospitalized patients. The final sample comprised 288 laboratory-confirmed dengue patients, who accounted for 56.8% of all hospitalized cases. The overall cost of the hospitalized dengue cases was US $210,084.30, in 2010, which corresponded to 2.5% of the gross domestic product per capita in Dourados that year. In 35.2% of cases, blood products were used in patients who did not meet the blood transfusion criteria. The overall median hospitalization cost was higher (p = 0.002) in the group that received blood products (US $1,622.40) compared with the group that did not receive blood products (US $550.20).ConclusionThe comparative costs between the public and the private health systems show that both the hospitalization of and platelet transfusion in patients who do not meet the WHO and Brazilian dengue guidelines increase the direct costs, but not the quality, of health care.

Highlights

  • Dengue fever (DF) is an important public health concern in tropical and subtropical regions worldwide, with approximately 100 million dengue infections and 24,000 deaths occurring annually worldwide [1,2]

  • Dengue is an arboviral disease transmitted to humans by Aedes aegypti [6], and the dengue virus (DENV) is a positive-strand RNA virus that belongs to the Flaviviridae family

  • These studies have failed to report the differences between the public and the private health care systems and the costs of hospitalization and platelet transfusion in cases in which the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines were not followed [3,9,10]

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Summary

Introduction

Dengue fever (DF) is an important public health concern in tropical and subtropical regions worldwide, with approximately 100 million dengue infections and 24,000 deaths occurring annually worldwide [1,2]. The results are often conflicting because studies have used inconsistent assumptions These studies have failed to report the differences between the public and the private health care systems and the costs of hospitalization and platelet transfusion in cases in which the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines were not followed [3,9,10]. An arboviral disease, is a public health problem in tropical and subtropical regions worldwide. This study aimed to describe the direct costs of hospitalized dengue cases, the financial impact of admissions and the use of blood products where current protocols for disease management were not followed

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