Background: The cost-effectiveness of endovascular thrombectomy (EVT) in patients with acute ischemic stroke due to M2 branch occlusion remains uncertain.
Objective: To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of EVT compared with medical management in patients with acute stroke presenting with M2 occlusion using a decision-analytic model.
Methods: A decision-analytic study was performed with Markov modeling to estimate the lifetime quality-adjusted life years and associated costs of EVT-treated patients compared with no-EVT/medical management. The study was performed over a lifetime horizon with a societal perspective in the Unites States setting. Base case, one-way, two-way, and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were performed.
Results: EVT was the long-term cost-effective strategy in 93.37% of the iterations in the probabilistic sensitivity analysis, and resulted in difference in health benefit of 1.66 QALYs in the 65-year-old age groups, equivalent to 606 days in perfect health. Varying the outcomes after both strategies shows that EVT was more cost-effective when the probability of good outcome after EVT was only 4-6% higher relative to medical management in clinically likely scenarios. EVT remained cost-effective even when its cost exceeded US$200 000 (threshold was US$209 111). EVT was even more cost-effective for 55-year-olds than for 65-year-old patients.
Conclusion: Our study suggests that EVT is cost-effective for treatment of acute M2 branch occlusions. Faster and improved reperfusion techniques would increase the relative cost-effectiveness of EVT even further in these patients.
Keywords: stroke; thrombectomy.
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