OBJECTIVES

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a common inherited blood disorder that results in abnormally shaped crescent-shaped red blood cells affecting around 100,000 patients in the US. SCD patients need routine and lifelong comprehensive care to treat the disease's complications, which sometimes are severe and lead to death. Sickle Cell Disease imposes a substantial economic burden on the healthcare system. Only one systematic review was conducted by Lee et al. (2020) to assess the quality of life and the economic burden of adult SCD patients in the USA. The study was conducted using both systematic literature review to identify the economic burden and patient-reported outcomes for the quality of life evaluation. However, it did not present any SCD-related costs. This research aims to assess the cost of illness and the economic burden of SCD in the US through a systematic approach.

METHODS

Literature review was accomplished using a systematic approach and a narrative synthesis. It was done by conducting a search through Embase, PubMed, and Google Scholar for published studies on the cost of illness studies in the US between 2010-2020.

RESULTS

The literature review identified five studies which deemed to be eligible as per the pre-identified eligibility criteria. Two out of the five studies identified the cost of SCD as the total cost of hospitalization, emergency department (ER), in-patient, and out-patient visits. One study focused on the adult SCD population and resulted in a total direct cost of $2.98 billion in 2015. The other study focused on pediatric patients and identified the total cost of SCD as $60.8 billion as per 2015 data.

CONCLUSIONS

SCD is anticipated to impose a substantial burden on the US's healthcare system, driven mainly by the cost of hospitalization, which represents 80% of the of the total healthcare expenditure.