Direct health care cost of treatment and medication of biliary atresia patients using the National Database of Health Insurance Claims and Specific Health Checkups

Background Treatment of biliary atresia (BA), which typically requires an initial surgical intervention called the Kasai procedure (KP) and possible liver transplant (LT) afterwards, is quite resource-intensive and would affect patients and families for a lifetime; yet a comprehensive view of the economic burden has not been reported. We estimated direct health care costs from the public payer perspective using the National Database of Health Insurance Claims and Specific Health Checkups of Japan. Methods Children newly diagnosed at ages 0 days to 4 years between April 2010 and September 2019 were identified. Costs of treatment were estimated for six phases of care: prediagnosis, KP and inpatient hospitalization, follow-up after KP, pre-transplant checkup, LT and inpatient hospitalization, and follow-up after LT. Results Mean total prediagnosis medical cost was $6847 (USD) and KP and inpatient hospitalization was $42,157 per year. Follow-up after KP was $15,499, and pre-transplant checkup after KP was $36,015 per year. Mean cost for LT and inpatient hospitalization was $105,334, and follow-up after liver transplant was $25,459 per year. Conclusions Treatment of BA requires extensive medical resource consumption. The use of the comprehensive national database allowed us to estimate the costs which will be useful for health service planning and cost-effectiveness analysis.

Automated summary

This study estimated the direct healthcare costs of treating biliary atresia in children using a comprehensive national database in Japan. The findings revealed that the treatment of biliary atresia is resource-intensive and costly, providing valuable information for healthcare planning and cost-effectiveness analysis.