Treatment Options for Age-Related Macular Degeneration: A Budget Impact Analysis from the Perspective of the Brazilian Public Health System

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a disease that causes reduced visual acuity and blindness. The new treatment options for AMD are not provided by the Brazilian public health system.To conduct a budget impact analysis of three scenarios for the introduction of AMD treatments: all the medications (verteporfin, ranibizumab, and bevacizumab–the reference scenario), ranibizumab alone, and bevacizumab alone.The basic assumption was that the Brazilian public health system would treat the entire target population with AMD aged > 70 years between 2008 and 2011. The size of the population of interest was estimated from official population projections and the prevalence of the disease was obtained from a systematic review. Medication prices were estimated by weighting their market values with correction factors to take account of the public procurement policy. The possibility of aliquoting bevacizumab was also considered. A panel of experts was consulted to estimate the market share of the different medications for the reference scenario. The incremental costs of the ranibizumab-alone and bevacizumab-alone scenarios compared to the reference scenario were calculated. Univariate sensitivity analyses were run to check the robustness of the model.In four years, the Brazilian public health system would have treated 1,136,349 individuals with AMD. The annual costs of treating one patient would have been US$476.65 for bevacizumab, US$11,469.39 for ranibizumab, and US$4,376.28 for verteporfin. The incremental cost of the ranibizumab-alone scenario would have been US$1,878,318,056.00 in four years, while the incremental cost for the bevacizumab-alone scenario would have been a reduction of US$4,978,326,359.00 (i.e., a cost saving) in the same period. The bevacizumab-alone option was found to represent a cost saving across sensitivity analyses.The introduction of bevacizumab for the treatment of AMD is recommended for the Brazilian Public Health System