Health Care Utilization and Costs Associated With Blue-Light vs White-Light Cystoscopy: A Real-World Bladder Cancer...

Area of Science:

• Urology
• Oncology
• Health Economics

Background:

• Blue-light cystoscopy (BLC) enhances non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) detection, particularly carcinoma in situ (CIS), compared to white-light cystoscopy (WLC).
• The economic impact and healthcare resource utilization associated with BLC versus WLC for NMIBC remain incompletely understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the economic implications and healthcare resource utilization of BLC compared to WLC in managing NMIBC.
• To determine if the enhanced diagnostic capabilities of BLC translate to increased healthcare costs.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective cohort analysis of claims data (June 2011-May 2023) from the Optum Research Database.
• Patients undergoing BLC or WLC were matched 6:1 using inverse probability of treatment weighting to control for baseline differences.
• Health care resource utilization and costs (total and bladder cancer-specific) were calculated per patient per month.

Main Results:

• The cohort comprised 794 BLC and 4764 WLC patients. Pre-weighting, CIS was more frequent in BLC patients (19.6% vs 8.8%).
• BLC patients had higher rates of upper-tract imaging, BCG treatment, and biomarker testing.
• Post-weighting, BLC patients showed increased bladder cancer-related ambulatory visits (1.3 vs 1.0 per month), but no significant differences in all-cause resource utilization or total costs were observed.

Conclusions:

• BLC is associated with increased healthcare resource utilization for NMIBC management.
• Despite higher utilization, BLC does not significantly increase overall healthcare costs compared to WLC.
• Enhanced diagnostic strategies like BLC can be implemented in clinical practice without imposing an additional financial burden.