Discovery Labs Issues Final Assessment of Reintubation on Healthcare Costs, Says Infants Treated with Surfaxin Survival Higher without Intubation

Discovery Laboratories, Inc.

today announced the presentation of the last in a series of pharmacoeconomic analyses indicating that a reduction in the rate of reintubation ^ among preterm infants may potentially result in hospital cost-savings related to fewer reintubation-related diagnoses of bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), air leak, sepsis, necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), or intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH), including savings of up to $562,000 per 100 patients diagnosed with BPD.  The pharmacoeconomic model was developed using an observation from a previously published study that preterm infants who receive SURFAXIN® may have lower rates of reintubation when compared with preterm infants who received either Curosurf® ^ or Survanta®.  The findings from this third and final pharmacoeconomic analysis were presented recently at the 2013 Pediatric Pharmacy Advocacy Group (PPAG) Annual Meeting held in Indianapolis, IN. Inpatient hospital costs for treating neonates with the primary diagnoses of BPD, air leak, sepsis, NEC, or IVH was obtained from a 2009 database of more than seven million U.S. hospital discharges, and multiplied by the intubation rate observed in each surfactant treatment group and the incidence of each morbidity in reintubated infants.  The model compared projected costs between the SURFAXIN treatment group and the comparator surfactant treatment groups from two phase 3 trials, SELECT and STAR, and yielded potential differences in hospital costs per 100 patients ranging from $34,000 for air leak alone to $562,000 for BPD (Figure 1). Discovery Labs expects to submit this analysis to a peer-reviewed, neonatology-focused medical journal later this year.