Cost Effectiveness of First-Line Oral Therapies for Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension: A Modelling Study

In recent years, a significant number of costly oral therapies have become available for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Funding decisions for these therapies requires weighing up their effectiveness and costs.

The aim of this study was to assess the cost effectiveness of monotherapy with oral PAH-specific therapies versus supportive care as initial therapy for patients with functional class (FC) II and III PAH in Canada.

A cost-utility analysis, from the perspective of a healthcare system and based on a Markov model, was designed to estimate the costs and quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) associated with bosentan, ambrisentan, riociguat, tadalafil, sildenafil and supportive care for PAH in treatment-naïve patients. Separate analyses were conducted for cohorts of patients commencing therapy at FC II and III PAH. Transition probabilities, based on the relative risk of improving and worsening in FC with treatment versus placebo, were derived from a recent network meta-analysis. Utility values and costs were obtained from published data and clinical expert opinion. Extensive sensitivity analyses were conducted.

Analysis suggests that sildenafil is the most cost-effective therapy for PAH in patients with FC II or III. Sildenafil was both the least costly and most effective therapy, thereby dominating all other treatments. Tadalafil was also less costly and more effective than supportive care in FC II and III; however, sildenafil was dominant over tadalafil. Even given the uncertainty within the clinical inputs, the probabilistic sensitivity analysis showed that apart from sildenafil and tadalafil, the other PAH therapies had negligible probability of being the most cost effective.

The results show that initiation of therapy with sildenafil is likely the most cost-effective strategy in PAH patients with either FC II or III disease.