Burden of pulmonary hypertension in patients with portal hypertension in the United States: a retrospective database study

Patients with portal hypertension may develop pulmonary hypertension. The economic implications of these comorbidities have not been systematically assessed. We compared healthcare resource utilization and costs in the United States between patients with co-existing portal hypertension and pulmonary hypertension (pulmonary hypertension cohort) and a matched cohort of portal hypertension patients without pulmonary hypertension (control cohort). In this retrospective analysis, adult pulmonary hypertension and control patients were identified from the Optum® Clinformatics® Data Mart database between 1 July 2014 and 30 June 2018. All patients had ≥2 claims with diagnosis codes for portal hypertension; pulmonary hypertension patients had ≥2 claims with diagnosis codes for pulmonary hypertension; controls could not have pulmonary hypertension diagnoses or any claims for pulmonary arterial hypertension-specific medications. Controls were matched to pulmonary hypertension patients by age, sex, Charlson comorbidity index score, and liver diseases. We assessed 12-month healthcare resource utilization and costs. Each cohort included 146 patients. During follow-up, pulmonary hypertension cohort patients were more likely than controls to experience a hospitalization (51% vs. 32%, P = 0.0014) and an emergency room visit (55% vs. 41%, P = 0.026). The average annual total cost was higher in pulmonary hypertension patients than for matched controls ($119,912 vs. $81,839, P < 0.0001). After covariate adjustment, costs for pulmonary hypertension cohort patients were 1.47 times higher than those for controls (P = 0.0197). These findings suggest that patients with portal hypertension and co-existing pulmonary hypertension are at a greater risk for hospitalization and incur higher mean annual total costs than portal hypertension patients without pulmonary hypertension.