Abstract
Background: There have been no licensed treatment options in the UK for treating thrombocytopenia in people with chronic liver disease requiring surgery. Established management largely involves platelet transfusion prior to the procedure or as rescue therapy for bleeding due to the procedure. Objectives: To assess the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of two thrombopoietin receptor agonists, avatrombopag (Doptelet®; Dova Pharmaceuticals, Durham, NC, USA) and lusutrombopag (Mulpleta®; Shionogi Inc., London, UK), in addition to established clinical management compared with established clinical management (no thrombopoietin receptor agonist) in the licensed populations. Design: Systematic review and cost-effectiveness analysis. Setting: Secondary care. Participants: Severe thrombocytopenia (platelet count of < 50,000/μl) in people with chronic liver disease requiring surgery. Interventions: Lusutrombopag 3 mg and avatrombopag (60 mg if the baseline platelet count is < 40,000/μl and 40 mg if it is 40,000–< 50,000/μl). Main outcome measures: Risk of platelet transfusion and rescue therapy or risk of rescue therapy only. Review methods: Systematic review including meta-analysis. English-language and non-English-language articles were obtained from several databases including MEDLINE, EMBASE and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, all searched from inception to 29 May 2019. Economic evaluation: Model-based cost-effectiveness analysis. Results: From a comprehensive search retrieving 11,305 records, six studies were included. Analysis showed that avatrombopag and lusutrombopag were superior to no thrombopoietin receptor agonist in avoiding both platelet transfusion and rescue therapy or rescue therapy only, and mostly with a statistically significant difference (i.e. 95% confidence intervals not overlapping the point of no difference). However, only avatrombopag seemed to be superior to no thrombopoietin receptor agonist in reducing the risk of rescue therapy, although far fewer patients in the lusutrombopag trials than in the avatrombopag trials received rescue therapy. When assessing the cost-effectiveness of lusutrombopag and avatrombopag, it was found that, despite the success of these in avoiding platelet transfusions prior to surgery, the additional long-term gain in quality-adjusted life-years was very small. No thrombopoietin receptor agonist was clearly cheaper than both lusutrombopag and avatrombopag, as the cost savings from avoiding platelet transfusions were more than offset by the drug cost. The probabilistic sensitivity analysis showed that, for all thresholds below £100,000, no thrombopoietin receptor agonist had 100% probability of being cost-effective. Limitations: Some of the rescue therapy data for lusutrombopag were not available. There were inconsistencies in the avatrombopag data. From the cost-effectiveness point of view, there were several additional important gaps in the evidence required, including the lack of a price for avatrombopag. Conclusions: Avatrombopag and lusutrombopag were superior to no thrombopoietin receptor agonist in avoiding both platelet transfusion and rescue therapy, but they were not cost-effective given the lack of benefit and increase in cost.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Book series | Health Technology Assessment |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue number | 51 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-220 |
| ISSN | 1366-5278 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Oct 2020 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Funding: This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment programme and will be published in full in Health Technology Assessment; Vol. 24, No. 51. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information.
Funding Information:
The research reported in this issue of the journal was commissioned and funded by the HTA programme on behalf of NICE as project number NIHR128164. The protocol was agreed in December 2018. The assessment report began editorial review in September 2019 and was accepted for publication in February 2020. The authors have been wholly responsible for all data collection, analysis and interpretation, and for writing up their work. The HTA editors and publisher have tried to ensure the accuracy of the authors’ report and would like to thank the reviewers for their constructive comments on the draft document. However, they do not accept liability for damages or losses arising from material published in this report.
Funding Information:
This report presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The views and opinions expressed by authors in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the NHS, the NIHR, NETSCC, the HTA programme or the Department of Health and Social Care. If there are verbatim quotations included in this publication the views and opinions expressed by the interviewees are those of the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect those of the authors, those of the NHS, the NIHR, NETSCC, the HTA programme or the Department of Health and Social Care.
Publisher Copyright:
© Queen’s Printer and Controller of HMSO 2020.
Keywords
- Bayes Theorem
- Cinnamates/adverse effects
- Clinical Trials as Topic
- Cost-Benefit Analysis
- End Stage Liver Disease/complications
- Humans
- Models, Economic
- Platelet Transfusion/economics
- Quality-Adjusted Life Years
- Receptors, Thrombopoietin/agonists
- Secondary Care
- Technology Assessment, Biomedical
- Thiazoles/adverse effects
- Thiophenes/adverse effects
- Thrombocytopenia/drug therapy