de Magalhães MJF, et al. – The cost of asthma in Portuguese children and the variations by the level of asthma control, had been computed. This study found higher costs of childhood asthma (0.9% of the healthcare expenditures in Portugal). Data demonstrated the potential of policies and interventions to improve asthma control and reduce acute use of healthcare services to reduce asthma costs.

Methods

• Experts performed a nationwide, population- and prevalence-based cost-of-illness study with a societal perspective.
• Direct and indirect costs were appraised using a bottom-up approach and a human capital method, respectively, for 208 children (<18 years), from two national repositories.
• They conducted generalised linear modelling for analysis of asthma costs’ determinants and sensitivity analysis to assess uncertainty.

Results

• For direct costs, the mean annualised asthma cost per child was €929.35 (95%CI, 809.65–1,061.11): €698.65 (95%CI, 600.88–798.27), and €230.70 (95%CI, 197.36–263.81) for indirect costs.
• It was noted that extrapolations for the Portuguese children amounted to €161,410,007.61 (95%CI, 140,620,769.55–184,293,968.55) for total costs.
• Moreover, direct costs represent 75.2% with the costliest domain (51.1% of total costs) being the healthcare service use:
  • 20.7% for scheduled medical visits and 30.4% for acute asthma care – non-scheduled medical visits (7.9%, €12,766,203.20),
  • emergency department visits (11.7%, €18,932,464.80) and
  • hospitalisations (10.8%, €17,406,946.00).
• Higher mean costs per year (adjusted coefficients: 1.46 [95%CI, 1.12-1.90] and 2.25 [95%CI, 1.56-3.24], respectively) were observed in children with partly controlled and uncontrolled asthma.