P1339 - Eosinophilic Esophagitis National Trends: 2004-2014 NIS Data Retrospective Cohort Analysis

Nooraldin Merza, MD¹, Muna Shaaeli, MD², Hina Yousuf, MD³, Mazin Saadaldin, MD³, Tarek Naguib, MD^3
1Wayne State University, Dearborn, MI; ²Beaumont Hospital, Dearborn, MI; ³Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Amarillo, TX

Introduction: The first cases of Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EoE) were described in the late 1970s but were defined as a distinct syndrome in the early 1990s. Until the mid-1990s, esophageal eosinophilia was identified in both adults and children who had other symptoms. From that on, its growing recognition and an exponential increase in the number of diagnosed patients made EoE both a scientific and health challenge issue. We explored in this analysis the trends of hospitalization charges, length of stay, and average national admissions of EoE

Methods: A retrospective analysis utilizing the de-identified data from the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) was used to analyze patients hospitalized with Eosinophilic esophagitis as a primary admission diagnosis from 2004 through 2014. Hospital encounters for EoE were identified using the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-9) diagnostic codes; '53013'. The NIS is a component of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, a national health care database developed through a partnership among federal and state governments and health care institutions sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. We extracted the total number of discharges, length of stay, and average total hospital charges. All were demonstrated through the graphs to show the trends

Results: A total of 625,380 patients with the main diagnosis of Eosinophilic Esophagitis were obtained through data analysis (2004 through 2014). The yearly estimated EoE discharge increased (from 56440 patients in 2004 to 63456 patients in 2011) then down to the average. Interestingly the average total hospital charges continued to increase consistently (23,967 US Dollars in 2004 vs. 57,361 US dollars in 2014). A slight upward trend could be noticed in the average length of stay (5.6 days in 2004 vs.6.3 days in 2014)

Discussion: As a rare disease, EoE has high costs. These costs can be related to diagnostic delays, the requirement for upper endoscopy with biopsy for diagnosis and monitoring of disease activity, expensive medications that are all currently used off-label, expensive dietary treatment options that are not often reimbursed by insurance, frequent doctor visits with subspecialists, and complications or disease exacerbations that result in additional costly tests and treatments. Here we examined the hospitalization costs, which is also an understudied area in EoE, but there are many future areas of research that can be explored to optimize cost-effective care for EoE patients



Disclosures:


Nooraldin Merza, MD¹, Muna Shaaeli, MD², Hina Yousuf, MD³, Mazin Saadaldin, MD³, Tarek Naguib, MD³. P1339 - Eosinophilic Esophagitis National Trends: 2004-2014 NIS Data Retrospective Cohort Analysis, ACG 2021 Annual Scientific Meeting Abstracts. Las Vegas, Nevada: American College of Gastroenterology.