Cost-effectiveness of adjunctive eptifibatide in patients undergoing coronary stenting in Germany.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the cost-effectiveness of adding eptifibatide to the standard treatment for selected high-risk patients undergoing coronary stenting in Germany. Furthermore, to investigate the impact of several extrapolation methods on the results.
METHODS: A Markov model was developed to reflect the clinical events in this specific patient population, including target vessel revascularization, myocardial infarction, and death. To extrapolate clinical data beyond 1 year, a linear, an exponential, and a Weibull survival curves were estimated. Patient characteristics and transition probabilities were derived from a high-risk subgroup of the ESPRIT trial; patient-level utility data came from a published Dutch study. Costs were calculated from a hospital and from a third-party payer perspective.
RESULTS: For both perspectives, the additional treatment with eptifibatide is the considered dominant alternative. The incremental net benefit of its use exceeds €10,000 for both perspectives. Results proved stable in probabilistic sensitivity analysis as well as under the different extrapolation scenarios.
CONCLUSIONS: Eptifibatide is likely to be dominant strategy with 77.7 and 96.7% of the simulations leading to QALYs gained and generating cost savings from both the hospital and the third-party payer perspective. Eptifibatide offsets its additional treatment costs by avoiding costly repeat procedures and leads to positive QALY gains by preventing cardiovascular events lending themselves to transient or permanent lower quality of life. The method used to extrapolate the short-term risks did not impact on results, mainly due to similar clinical risk profiles between the two treatment groups in the long term.