Direct costs of hospital care of heart failure at cardiology institute of Abidjan

Abstract

To evaluate the direct cost of hospitalization for heart failure (HF) at Institut de Cardiologie d’Abidjan. From December 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020, we conducted a prospective study on a sample of 150 patients hospitalized in the medicine department of Institut de Cardiologie d’Abidjan. 150 patients hospitalized for HF were included in our study. 61% of the patients were male. The mean age was 54.5 ± 17.2 years. Nearly 40% of our patients had a monthly income of less than 60,000 CFA Francs. The majority of patients did not have health insurance, 83.3%. Most of our patients were admitted with NYHA stages III and IV (32% and 56%). Dilated cardiomyopathy (42.7%) was the most frequent etiology. As regards the economic aspect, the average direct cost per patient for the management of heart failure in our study was estimated at 490,500.8 CFA Francs with extremes of 74,414 and 1,512,857 CFA Francs and the cost of the paraclinical assessment occupied an important part (211,130 CFA Francs) (43%). This cost increased with male sex, low monthly income, NYHA stage, ischemic heart disease and the occurrence of death but without any statistically significant relationship. The cost of treating heart failure is high in our country, where the guaranteed minimum wage is 60,000 CFA Francs. This suggests that a policy should be implemented to identify and treat the risk factors of the pathology among people at risk and to put in place a good system of health insurance and mutual health insurance in Côte d’Ivoire.