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Healthcare resource utilization in patients treated with empagliflozin in East Asia

Sheu WH, Seino Y, Tan EC, Yabe D, Ha KH, Nangaku M, Chung WJ, Node K et al.

Journal of diabetes investigation, 2022

12 citations

Abstract

AIMS/INTRODUCTION: We investigated the utilization of healthcare resources in patients with type 2 diabetes treated with empagliflozin, a sodium-glucose co-transporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitor, versus dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors in clinical practice in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: We analyzed the Japanese Medical Data Vision database (December 2014-April 2018), the South Korean National Health Information Database, and the Taiwanese National Health Insurance claims database (both May 2016-December 2017). Patients with type 2 diabetes starting empagliflozin, 10 or 25 mg, or a DPP-4 inhibitor were matched 1:1 via propensity scores (PS). We compared inpatient care needs, emergency room (ER) visits, and outpatient visits between the treatment groups using Poisson regression and Cox proportional hazards models, pooled across countries by random-effects meta-analysis.

RESULTS: We identified 28,712 pairs of PS-matched patients; the mean follow-up was 5.7-6.8 months. Empagliflozin-treated patients had a 27% lower risk of all-cause hospitalization compared with DPP-4 inhibitor-treated patients (rate ratio [RR] 0.73, 95% CI 0.67-0.79), and 23% reduced risk for first hospitalization (hazard ratio 0.77, 95% CI 0.73-0.81). The risk for an ER visit was 12% lower with empagliflozin than with DPP-4 inhibitors (RR 0.88, 95% CI 0.83-0.94) while the risk for outpatient visit was 4% lower (RR 0.96, 95% CI 0.96-0.97). These findings were generally consistent…

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