Gender‐adjusted and age‐adjusted economic inpatient burden of congestive heart failure: cost and disability‐adjusted life‐year analysis

AIMS: The two components of disability‐adjusted life year (DALY), years of life lost (YLL) and years lived with disability (YLD), are underutilized in evaluating heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) and in assessing the global burden of disease. We aim to describe both the direct (medical) and the indirect (morbidity and mortality) inpatient cost of congestive heart failure in a high‐income non‐Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Middle Eastern country in relation to YLL and YLD. METHODS AND RESULTS: We used the World Health Organization's global burden of disease methodology to calculate DALY, YLL, and YLD in 174 consecutive prospectively enrolled New York Heart Association Classes II–IV patients in a single‐centre heart failure registry using a 0.4 disability weight and a 3% future age discount. We reported the cost of hospitalization, re‐hospitalization, and non‐invasive and invasive procedures per 1000 HFrEF patients in US dollars (USD). Expressing results as per 1000 HFrEF capita revealed a DALY of 1480 ± 1909 vs. 2177 ± 2547 in women and men, respectively. The costs per HFrEF capita in USD were $909.00 ± 676.1 for a single‐day hospital stay, $7999 per single hospitalization, $12 311 ± 13 840 for annual hospitalizations, $20 486 ± 22 068 for all‐cause hospitalizations, and $37 355 ± 49 336 from the time of diagnosis until death or recovery. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, HFrEF imposed a substantial economic and disability burden on one non‐Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Middle Eastern country. However, men represented a higher economic burden than women.