Purpose: The cost consequences of alternative treatment modalities for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) were investigated. The present lifetime costs of watchful waiting, medical management and surgery alone and in various combinations were estimated for a synthetic cohort of men comprised of 5 age groupings.
Materials and methods: Synthetic cohort models were constructed to follow men at different ages "analytically" for specific intervals and to calculate the cumulative health care costs associated with alternative BPH treatment regimens during those periods. These models accounted explicitly for survival probabilities, the use of different types of health care services and products, price changes for those services and products, failure rates of some therapies and a discount factor needed to compute the present value of the cost streams. The models were implemented with hospital discharge and other data on BPH incident cases in the state of Florida in approximately 1989.
Results: The addition of medical management to the mix of therapies is likely to increase overall health care spending on BPH treatment, perhaps by a considerable amount. The cost-effectiveness of each type of BPH therapy differs by the age of the patient at which it is first initiated. All other parameters being equal, surgery appears to be more cost-effective at younger patient ages, while medical management has a cost advantage at older ages.
Conclusions: The cost implications of alternative BPH therapies are substantial, and warrant more detailed consideration by clinicians and health policy specialists.