Hospital-based supervised exercise (SEP) is a guideline-recommended intervention for patients with intermittent claudication (IC). However, due to the limited availability of SEP, home-based structured exercise programs (HSEP) have become increasingly popular alongside the "go home and walk" advice. We evaluated the cost-effectiveness of walk advice (WA) with Nordic pole walking vs. SEP combined with WA or HSEP combined with WA. We used data from the SUNFIT RCT (NCT02341716) to measure quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) over a 12-month follow-up, and economic costs were obtained from a hospital cost-per-patient accounting system. Incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) were calculated, and uncertainty was assessed using nonparametric bootstrapping. The average health-care-cost per patient was similar in the WA (EUR 1781, n = 51) and HSEP (EUR 1820, n = 48) groups but higher in the SEP group (EUR 4619, n = 50, p-value < 0.01). Mean QALYs per patient during the follow-up were similar with no statistically significant differences. The findings do not support SEP as a cost-effective treatment for IC, as it incurred significantly higher costs without providing additional health improvements over WA with or without HSEP during the one-year observation period. The analysis also suggested that HSEP may be cost-effective compared to WA, but only with a 64% probability.
Keywords: cost-effectiveness analysis; exercise therapy; intermittent claudication; peripheral artery disease; quality-adjusted life-years.