Healthcare resource utilization and economic burden of antifungal management in patients with hematologic malignancy in Japan: a retrospective database study

To examine treatment patterns of real-world antifungal management of patients at high risk of invasive fungal infections (IFI) and evaluate healthcare resource utilization and costs associated with antifungal management of IFIs in Japan.

This retrospective, observational study extracted data from a hospital-based claims database for patients in Japan who either (a) underwent allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT), or (b) were hospitalized with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) or myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and received chemotherapy during the study period of January 2010 to January 2019.

863 patients were included in the allo-HSCT cohort and 4498 patients were included in the AML/MDS cohort. In the allo-HSCT cohort, 91% received more than one antifungal drug during the index hospitalization. In the AML/MDS cohort, approximately 50% received more than one antifungal drug during the index hospitalization. For both the allo-HSCT and AML/MDS cohorts, about 90% of the total cost was attributed to inpatient costs. Of note, both the total cost (the total inpatient and outpatient cost) and the index hospitalization costs were higher in patients treated with multiple antifungal drugs than in those treated with a single antifungal drug during the index hospitalization. Despite being at high IFI risk, 12% of the patients in the AML/MDS cohort did not receive antifungal drugs during the index hospitalization.

Most patients with hematologic malignancy and high IFI risk underwent complicated antifungal management requiring use of multiple drugs, and accounted for high healthcare resource utilization and costs.