Original article SWISS MED WKLY 2010; 140 ( 5 –6) : 85–91 · www.smw.ch Estimation of cost-of-illness in patients with psoriasis in Switzerland

Background: Evaluation of the current clinical treatment of psoriasis in Switzerland remains to be measured with the parameters cost-of-illness and quality of life. Objective:To obtain data on out-of-pocket ex-penses, costs of outpatient/office-based care and inpatient care for psoriasis, and to extrapolate to-tal costs by state of severity to the entire Swiss population. Methods: 1200 retrospective surveys were dis-tributed to patient members of the Swiss Psoriasis andVitiligo Society, and 400 surveys to office-/hos-pital-based Swiss dermatologists. The reference year for data collection was 2005. Patients were stratified into three subgroups according to severity of disease.Costs of inpatient care weremeasured by the amount of hospital days of psoriatic patients from the Swiss Federal Hospital Statistics. Results: 383 patient questionnaires, and 170 cases documented by 57 dermatologists were ana-lyzed. Out-of-pocket expenses/costs for ambula-tory care per patient and year ranged from CHF 600–1100 for mild psoriasis to CHF 2400–9900 for severe psoriasis. Including costs for inpatient care of approximately CHF 60 million, the total annual costs for psoriasis in Switzerland in 2004/5 amounted to approximately CHF 314–458 million. Conclusions:Moderate-to-severe psoriasis is as-sociated with a significant impact on the quality of life and at least 4-fold higher costs than mild pso-riasis, indicating the need for efficient control of the disease. This cost-of-illness study provides specific health economic data for future healthcare decision making, particularly with the advent of new thera-peutic agents for effective psoriasis control. Key words: moderate-to-severe psoriasis; quality of life; cost-of-illness; Switzerland The study was carried out b