Administering antenatal corticosteroids to pregnant women at high risk for preterm birth was a cost-effective intervention that improved infant respiratory outcomes, according to a new study.
“This intervention has a potential cost saving in the United States of approximately $100 million dollars annually from the benefit in the immediate neonatal outcome alone,” Cynthia Gyamfi-Bannerman, MD, of Columbia University, New York, and her associates reported in JAMA Pediatrics. “Because late preterm birth comprises a large proportion of all preterm births, our findings have the potential for a large influence on public health.”
The researchers conducted a retrospective secondary analysis of the randomized Antenatal Late Preterm Steroids (ALPS) clinical trial October 2010 to February 2015. The trial enrolled randomly assigned antenatal administration of betamethasone or placebo to women pregnant with a singleton and at high risk for preterm birth while between 34 weeks, 6 days, and 36 weeks, 0 days, of gestation.
Antenatal corticosteroid administration was regarded as effective if a newborn did not require treatment in the first 72 hours for respiratory distress or illness. Treatment could include “continuous positive airway pressure or high-flow nasal cannula for 2 hours or more, supplemental oxygen with a fraction of inspired oxygen of 30% or more for 4 hours or more, and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation or mechanical ventilation,” Dr. Gyamfi-Bannerman and her associates wrote.
To tally the costs, the researchers used Medicaid rates to estimate the total in 2015 U.S. dollars for betamethasone, outpatient visits or inpatient stays to administer it, and all direct newborn care costs, including neonatal ICU daily costs stratified by respiratory illness severity. Betamethasone administration included an initial 12-mg intramuscular dose followed by another after 24 hours if the infant had not been delivered.
“Because therapy often persists for longer than this 72-hour duration, we measured costs through hospital discharge,” the authors wrote. “The analysis took the perspective of a third-party payer in which we included direct medical costs and associated overhead accruing to hospitals and medical payers for the care of enrolled patients and their infants.”
Among 2,821 mothers not lost to follow-up during the secondary analysis, 1,426 received betamethasone and 1,395 received placebo. For mothers who received betamethasone antenatally, the total mean cost was $4,681 per mother-infant pair. Total mean cost for those in the placebo group was $5,379 per pair, resulting in a significant mean $698 savings (P = .02). Respiratory morbidity was 2.9% lower in infants whose mothers received antenatal corticosteroid treatment.
“Thus, because the treated group had lower costs and this strategy was more effective, administration of betamethasone to women at risk for late preterm birth was judged to be a dominant strategy, which is defined as one in which costs are lower and effectiveness is higher than a comparator (incremental cost-effectiveness ratio [ICER], −23 986),” Dr. Gyamfi-Bannerman and her associates reported. ICER is defined as the difference in mean total cost per patient in the betamethasone and placebo arms divided by the difference in the effectiveness.
Study limitations were an inability to estimate costs according to quality-adjusted life years or to include families’/caregivers’ costs.
SOURCE: Gyamfi-Bannerman C. JAMA Pediatr. 2019 Mar 11. doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2019.0032.