Direct medical costs of monitoring and treating patients with Takayasu arteritis in Italy.

The study provides the first overall estimate of the costs of Takayasu arteritis (TA) monitoring and treatment in Italy and highlights the differences in cost components across defined subgroups of patients. We estimated resource consumption and direct costs from the Italian National Health Service perspective. We conducted a multicenter, prospective study in 12 medical departments. All the 67 patients recruited met the American College of Rheumatology 1990 criteria for the classification of TA and were followed up for 1 year. For the purpose of analysis they were divided into two groups: "active TA" (patients who had taken at least one drug specific for TA treatment, i.e., corticosteroids and/or cytotoxics), and "inactive TA" (all the remaining patients). The average cost per year was Euro 4,079. Patients with active TA (Euro 5,055) had a significantly higher mean cost per year than those with inactive TA (Euro 1,328). In particular, significant differences were found for costs in general practitioner consultations, laboratory tests, and hospital admissions. These findings suggest that patients not only experience more complications requiring hospital admissions but also see general practitioners more often during the active stage of the disease, presumably in order to obtain a prescription for laboratory tests.