The Cost-Effectiveness of Corticosteroids for the Treatment of CAP: Q&A With Eleftherios Mylonakis, MD, PhD
By: Vanessa Claude
April 18, 2019
1. What effect do you hope the findings of this study will have on the use of corticosteroids in the treatment of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP)?
There is a high interest in identifying cost-effective interventions that both improve the outcomes of CAP and decrease its financial impact. Studies focusing on well-defined risk subgroups may help to further inform the use of this strategy. The aim of this study was to evaluate the financial benefit from the use of corticosteroids in the treatment of CAP and provide a cost-effectiveness analysis. In our study, the corticosteroids + antibiotics strategy had 82.6% chance of being cost-effective for severe CAP and 29.9% for non-severe CAP.
2. What are some factors that could enhance this field further?
A large randomized trial assessing the exact costs, quality of life, LOS, and readmission associated with CAP with stratification according to severity would appropriately settle the controversy with respect to the use of corticosteroids in CAP.
3. Are there any other findings you’d like to expand on in the future? And, what results would you like to find?
We were unable to model readmissions for complications that were not related to CAP. In addition, we did not distinguish the type of pathogen causing CAP. We hope to address these issues in the future.
Read the full article: “The Cost-Effectiveness of Corticosteroids for the Treatment of Community-Acquired Pneumonia”
Dr. Mylonakis is Chief of the Infectious Diseases Division, Charles C.J. Carpenter Professor of Infectious Disease and Assistant Dean for Outpatient Investigations at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. He is director of Infectious Diseases at Rhode Island Hospital and The Miriam Hospital, and director of the COBRE Center for Antimicrobial Resistance and Therapeutic Discovery. His work combines biostatistics, decision-making analysis, risk assessment, outcomes research, and cost-effectiveness studies along with molecular biology and immunology to answer complex scientific questions.