The optimal diagnostic strategies for patient with coronary artery diseases and stable chest pain syndrome: a cost-effectiveness analysis

BACKGROUND: Numerous invasive and noninvasive diagnostic tests with different cost and effectiveness exist for detection of coronary artery disease. This diversity leads to unnecessary utilization of health services. For this reason, this study focused on the cost-effectiveness analysis of diagnostic strategies for coronary artery disease from the perspective of the health care system with 1-year time horizon. RESULTS: Incremental cost effectiveness ratios of all strategies were less than the threshold except for the electrocardiography-computed tomography angiography-coronary angiography strategy, and cost of the cardiac magnetic resonance imaging-based strategy was higher than the cost of other strategies. Also, the number of correct diagnosis in the electrocardiography-coronary angiography strategy was higher than the other strategies, and its ICER was 15.197 dollars per additional correct diagnosis. Moreover, the sensitivity analysis found that the probability of doing MRI and sensitivity of the exercise electrocardiography had impact on the results. CONCLUSION: The most cost-effective strategy for acute patient is ECG-CA strategy, and for chronic patient, the most cost-effective strategies are electrocardiography-single photon emission computed tomography-coronary angiography and electrocardiography-exercise electrocardiography-coronary angiography. Applying these strategies in the same clinical settings may lead to a better utilization of resources.