OBJECTIVES: Patients with CRSwNP have high burden of symptoms, negatively impacting quality of life. Surgical interventions are often conducted but are associated with disease recurrence. This research aims to investigate annual number of hospitalizations for CRSwNP and associated costs from Brazilian private healthcare system perspective.

METHODS: Data were obtained from publicly available National Health Agency database. This analysis selected patients of ≥18 years old with CRSwNP surgery related hospitalizations with ICD-10 diagnosis code of chronic sinusitis (J32) from 2015-2019. It was assumed CRSwNP hospitalizations were those with at least one surgery procedure previously selected by an otorhinolaryngologist. Hospitalization rates (per 100,000) were obtained by the ratio of hospitalization numbers to total beneficiaries. Absolute and relative frequencies were used for categorical variables and measures of central tendency and dispersion for continuous.

RESULTS: 25,456 CRSwNP hospitalizations were identified, representing a mean (standard deviation; SD) of 5,091 (1,157.8) annually and corresponding to 69.2% of all chronic sinusitis hospitalizations. Overall, 52.7% of patients were male, with mean (SD) age of 38(0.5) years and mean (SD) length of stay of two days (0.4) in-hospital. This results in total cost of BRL 231,642,206, mean annual cost of BRL 46,328,441 (DP 13,743,379) and mean (SD) cost per hospitalization of BRL 8,961 (870.4). Hospitalization rate increased, ranging from 1.6 in 2015 to 2.7 in 2019 (+69.1%). Similarly, costs increased by 112.8%: BRL 25,039,624 in 2015 to BRL 53,285,820 in 2019. Most hospitalizations billed multiple surgical procedures: 8,215 (32.3%) had two; 5,386 (21.2%) three and 5,319 (20.9%) ≥four. Procedures most used were maxillary sinusotomy (32.6%) and ethmoidectomy (30.6%).

CONCLUSIONS: CRSwNP imposes a major economic impact on healthcare system. Despite the surgical procedures performed and the associated hospital costs, there may be a need to repeat surgery due to recurrences, maintaining the prospect of increased costs. Funding: GSK (218310).