Published Online
on January 3, 2005

A more recent version of this article appeared on January 18, 2005

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Submitted on April 26, 2004
Revised on September 13, 2004
Accepted on October 5, 2004

Cost-Effectiveness of Dual-Chamber Pacing Compared With Ventricular Pacing for Sinus Node Dysfunction

Stéphane Rinfret MD, MSc, David J. Cohen MD, MSc^*, Gervasio A. Lamas MD, Kirsten E. Fleischmann MD, MPH, Milton C. Weinstein PhD, John Orav PhD, Eleanor Schron MS, RN, Kerry L. Lee PhD, and Lee Goldman MD

From the Department of Medicine (S.R.), Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM), University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada; the Department of Medicine (D.J.C.), Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass; the Division of Cardiology (G.A.L.), Mount Sinai Medical Center and Miami Heart Institute, Miami Beach, Fla; the Department of Medicine (K.E.F., L.G.), University of California, San Francisco, Calif; the Center for Risk Analysis (M.C.W.), Harvard School of Public Health, Boston Mass; the Department of Medicine (J.O.), Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass; the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (E.S.), Bethesda, Md; and the Duke Clinical Research Institute and Duke University School of Medicine (K.L.L.), Durham, NC.

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: dcohen{at}caregroup.harvard.edu.

Background--Compared with single-chamber ventricular pacing, dual-chamber pacing can reduce adverse events and, as a result, improve quality of life in patients paced for sick sinus syndrome. It is not clear, however, how these benefits compare with the increased cost of dual-chamber pacemakers.

Methods and Results--We used 4-year data from a 2010-patient, randomized trial to estimate the incremental cost-effectiveness of dual-chamber pacing compared with ventricular pacing and then projected these findings over the patients’ lifetimes by using a Markov model that was calibrated to the first 5 years of in-trial data. To assess the stability of the findings, we performed 1000 bootstrap analyses and multiple sensitivity analyses. During the first 4 years of the trial, dual-chamber pacemakers increased quality-adjusted life expectancy by 0.013 year per subject at an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of $53 000 per quality-adjusted year of life gained. Over a lifetime, dual-chamber pacing was projected to increase quality-adjusted life expectancy by 0.14 year with an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of $6800 per quality-adjusted year of life gained. In bootstrap analyses, dual-chamber pacing was cost-effective in 91.9% of simulations at a threshold of $50 000 per quality-adjusted year of life and in 93.2% of simulations at a threshold of $100 000. Its cost-effectiveness ratio was also below this threshold in numerous sensitivity analyses that varied key estimates.

Conclusions--For patients with sick sinus syndrome requiring pacing, dual-chamber pacing increases quality-adjusted life expectancy at a cost that is generally considered acceptable.

Key words: pacing • pacemakers • sinoatrial node • cost-benefit analysis • quality of life

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