Background: Changes in clinical care for appendicitis have impacted healthcare use associated with treatment. We evaluated national trends and assessed factors associated with healthcare costs for appendicitis in the United States.
Design: The Disease Expenditure Project, the Global Burden of Disease study, and the National Inpatient Sample were used to estimate total national expenditures, per-capita costs for incident cases, and factors associated with inpatient costs for appendicitis management, respectively. The national estimates of appendicitis costs were obtained from 1996 to 2016. Appendicitis incidence was estimated to calculate per-capita costs. After application of survey weights for the stratified sample design, 191,180 weighted discharges for appendicitis from the 2016 National Inpatient Sample study were evaluated. The Disease Expenditure Project and the Global Burden of Disease study were used to estimate total and per-capita spending. Temporal trends were evaluated using joinpoint regression, expressed as annual percent change. Multivariable linear regression was used to evaluate patient factors associated with total hospital charges.
Results: In 2016, total spending on appendicitis was $9.3 billion (95% confidence interval: $8.0-$10.8], a 2-fold increase from $4.7 billion ($4.0-$5.3) in 1996. Per-capita spending decreased significantly after 2011 (annual percent change -3.7% [-4.4% to -2.9%]). Patients ≥65 years accounted for 64.1% (61.1%-67.3%) of total spending for appendicitis. The hospital charges for older patients were significantly higher among those undergoing appendectomy.
Conclusion: Overall healthcare spending for appendicitis has doubled from 1996 to 2016, but per capita spending has decreased since 2011, driven by improved efficiency of inpatient care. Nearly two-thirds of spending is on patients ≥65 years, with significantly higher costs associated with surgical management in this population.
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