Modelling cost-effectiveness and health gains of a "universal" vs. "prioritized" HCV treatment policy in a real-life cohort

We evaluated the cost-effectiveness of two alternative DAA treatment policies in a real-life cohort of HCV-infected patients: Policy 1 - "universal": treat all patients, regardless of the fibrosis stage; Policy 2 - treat only "prioritized" patients, delay treatment of the remaining patients until reaching stage F3. A liver disease progression Markov model, which used a lifetime horizon and healthcare system perspective, was applied to the PITER cohort (representative of Italian HCV-infected patients in care). Specifically, 8,125 patients naïve to DAA treatment, without clinical, sociodemographic or insurance restrictions was used to evaluate the policies' cost-effectiveness. The patients' age, fibrosis stage, assumed DAA treatment cost of €15,000/patient and the Italian liver disease costs were used to evaluate Quality-Adjusted Life-Years (QALY) This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.