Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy Works, But Is It Cost Effective?


Published On: September 2nd, 2009

Boston Scientific showed that its $30,000 devices that slow heart deterioration, called cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillators, produced clinical benefit in a 1,820-patient clinical trial, according to results published in today’s New England Journal of Medicine.

The company announced in June that the study, known as MADIT-CRT, demonstrated that the resynchronizers reduced hospitalizations, but these complete results showed the devices were even more effective than earlier reported, according to the WSJ.

But an accompanying editorial in today’s NEJM asks whether expanded CRT use in patients with heart failure is cost effective.

Mariell Jessup of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, points out that despite evidence that patients with certain types of heart failure benefit from CRT, at least 30% of patients who are selected for therapy don’t benefit from CRT. In the MADIT-CRT trial, “12 patients would need to be treated to prevent a single heart-failure event,” she writes in the editorial.

“Is this money that could be spent more wisely?” asks Jessup. The potential expanded use “in patients who are unlikely to derive a mortality benefit will alter the benefit-to-safety ratio and tip the score on cost-effectiveness even further in the wrong direction.”

Photo by CarbonNYC via Flickr

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Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy Works, But Is It Cost Effective?

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