PARIS – When a patient undergoing transcatheter aortic valve replacement needs a permanent pacemaker, the additional hospital costs are significantly less if the device is implanted within 24 hours post TAVR rather than later, Seth Clancy reported at the annual congress of the European Association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions.
“Not only the need for permanent pacemaker implantation but also the timing of the procedure as well as the management and monitoring of conduction disturbances have important resource use implications for TAVR,” observed Mr. Clancy of Edwards Lifesciences of Irvine, Calif.
Seth Clancy
He presented an economic analysis of all 12,148 TAVR hospitalizations included in the Medicare database for 2014. A key finding: The mean cost of TAVR hospitalizations with no permanent pacemaker implantation was $63,136, while for the 12% of TAVRs that did include permanent pacemaker implantation, the mean cost shot up to $80,441, for a difference of $17,305.
The additional cost of putting in a permanent pacemaker included nearly $8,000 for supplies, more than $2,600 for additional time in the operating room and/or catheterization laboratory, and in excess of $2,100 worth of extra ICU or cardiac care unit time.
Patients who received a permanent pacemaker during their TAVR hospitalization spent an average of 2.3 days longer in the hospital than the mean 6.6 days for patients who didn’t get a permanent pacemaker.
Drilling down further into the data, Mr. Clancy found that 41% of permanent pacemakers implanted during hospitalization for TAVR went in within 24 hours of the TAVR procedure. In a multivariate regression analysis adjusted for differences in patient demographics, comorbid conditions, and complications, those patients generated an average of $9,843 more in hospital costs than patients who didn’t get a permanent pacemaker during their TAVR hospitalization. However, patients who received a permanent pacemaker more than 24 hours after TAVR cost an average of $17,681 more and had a 2.72-day longer stay than patients who didn’t get a permanent pacemaker.
The need for a permanent pacemaker is a common complication following TAVR. This has been a sticking point for many cardiothoracic surgeons, who note that rates of permanent pacemaker implantation following surgical aortic valve replacement are far lower. Still, rates in TAVR patients have come down over time with advances in valve technology. Currently, permanent pacemaker implantation rates in TAVR patients are 5%-25%, depending upon the valve system, according to Mr. Clancy.
Advances in device design and techniques aimed at reducing the permanent pacemaker implantation rate substantially below the 12% figure seen in 2014 have the potential to generate substantial cost savings, he observed.
Session chair Mohammad Abdelghani, MD, of the Academic Medical Center at Amsterdam questioned whether the study results are relevant to European practice because of the large differences in health care costs.
Discussant Sonia Petronio, MD, expressed a more fundamental reservation.
“This is a very important subject – and a very dangerous one,” said Dr. Petronio of the University of Pisa (Italy). “It’s easier and less costly for a hospital to encourage increasing early permanent pacemaker implantation because the patient can go home earlier.”
“We don’t want to put in a pacemaker earlier to save money,” agreed Dr. Abdelghani. “This is not a cost-effectiveness analysis, it’s purely a cost analysis. Cost-effectiveness would take into account the long-term clinical outcomes and welfare of the patients. We would like to see that from you next year.”
Mr. Clancy is an employee of Edwards Lifesciences, which funded the study.