1640 - A Clinical Audit and Cost Analysis of Tuberculosis Management at a Tertiary Referral Centre in the Republic of Ireland

Background: Ireland is a low tuberculosis (TB) incidence country. Effective TB services are important in the efforts to meet WHO End TB Targets. A dedicated TB clinic was established in our tertiary referral centre in 2018. Our aim is to describe the patients with TB attending our service and evaluate the care provided to them in terms of cost and clinical effectiveness. 

Methods: We performed a retrospective review of patients attending our service from 01/07/2018-31/12/2019. We included patients who were referred for assessment of symptoms of active tuberculosis. We collected data on patients risk factors for TB, time from illness onset to diagnosis and resources utilized (including hospital admissions, outpatient appointments, investigations and drug treatment). We estimated the productivity losses due to TB in our cohort following the Hanover Consensus. Using national TB notifications data we used our estimate treatment cost and productivity losses to estimate the total national cost of TB in Ireland in 2019. 

Results: Fifty-four patients were assessed for TB in our clinic. Most patients (68.5%) referred had a diagnosis of TB made, 5.6% had a non-tuberculosis mycobacterial infection and the remainder had no mycobacterial infection diagnosed. Over half (51.4%) of patients with TB had respiratory TB. The most prevalent risk factor was being from a country of high TB incidence (59.5% of TB patients). Five patients (13.5%) had drug resistance. Patients were referred most frequently from the emergency department (54.1%). The median time from symptom onset to diagnosis was 14.1 weeks (IQR 5.3-30) in patients with respiratory TB compared to 25.9 weeks ( IQR 6.3-55.9) in patients with non-respiratory TB. Out of 35 patients who remained within our service 97.1% (34/35) completed treatment and 2.9% (1/35) are still on treatment. 
We estimate that the median cost of managing a case of TB in our centre was €6088 (€1,003-17,588). The estimated cost of managing all 267 cases of TB in Ireland in 2019 was €9,048,380 which incurred productivity losses of €791,421. The total cost of TB to Ireland in 2019 was €9,839,801.

Conclusion: Our clinic had a high rate of treatment success. Interventions to reduce diagnostic delay and cost are needed.