Annual Cardiovascular-Related Hospitalization Days Avoided with Tafamidis in Patients with Transthyretin Amyloid Cardiomyopathy

BACKGROUND: Patients with transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM) experience infiltrative cardiomyopathy and heart failure symptoms requiring costly hospitalizations. The Transthyretin Amyloidosis Cardiomyopathy Clinical Trial (ATTR-ACT) demonstrated the efficacy of tafamidis on the frequency of cardiovascular (CV)-related hospitalizations in patients with ATTR-CM. PURPOSE: As length of stay can affect the total hospitalization burden, our study aimed to better understand the impact of tafamidis on the number of CV-related hospital days avoided in the management of ATTR-CM patients. METHODS: Data from ATTR-ACT were used to calculate the total burden of CV-related hospitalization (days) by treatment arm in this post hoc analysis. RESULTS: In the total trial population, patients receiving tafamidis had significantly fewer CV-related hospitalizations per year (relative risk reduction [RRR] 0.68; 0.4750 vs. 0.7025, p < 0.0001) and a shorter mean length of stay per CV-related hospitalization event (8.6250 vs. 9.5625 days) than patients receiving placebo. Taken together, tafamidis prevented 2.62 CV-related hospitalization days per patient per year. A subgroup analysis showed that with earlier treatment initiation of tafamidis, the annual number of CV-related hospitalizations was significantly lowered by 52% compared with placebo (RRR 0.48; 0.3378 vs. 0.7091, p < 0.0001). With 1.14 fewer days per hospitalization, tafamidis reduced the annual number of CV-related hospitalization days by 3.96 days per New York Heart Association class I/II patient. CONCLUSIONS: In patients with ATTR-CM, tafamidis was associated with a lower rate of CV-related hospitalizations and shorter length of hospital stay. Timely diagnosis and treatment with tafamidis could further decrease the total number of CV-related hospitalization days per year. CLINICALTRIALS.GOV IDENTIFIER: NCT01994889.