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GUIDELINES/RECOMMENDATIONS Is the commonly used Femtosecond laser-assisted cataract surgery worth the cost compared to the more cost-effective phacoemulsification cataract surgery?
The results of a study published in JAMA Ophthalmology show a stark contrast between the cost-effectiveness of Femtosecond laser-assisted cataract surgery (FLACS) and phacoemulsification cataract surgery (PCS).
Key Points:
- The research conducted a secondary analysis of the FEMCAT trial, focusing on cost utility between FLACS and PCS.
- Study comprised of 870 participants, majority of whom were women with an average age of 72.3 years.
- Mean costs for cataract surgeries were $1235 for FLACS and $621 for PCS.
- Total mean cost of care at 12 months: $7787 for FLACS patients and $7146 for PCS patients.
- FLACS resulted in a mean of 0.788 QALYs and PCS yielded 0.792 QALYs.
- ICER for FLACS was $150,000 per QALY.
Additional Points:
- Femtosecond cataract surgery’s cost-effectiveness probability compared with PCS stood at 15.7% at a threshold of $32,973 per QALY.
- The EVPI at this threshold was $270,530,231.
- FACT trial’s cost-utility analysis reported a small cost difference between PCS and FLACS, supporting these results.
- Limitations of the study include small sample size and limitation of information analysis to the calculation of EVPI.
Conclusion:
- The study concludes that FLACS is not cost-effective compared to PCS and should not be reimbursed by healthcare systems.
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“All these results are very consistent, with outcomes of FLACS and PCS very close to each other and always to the disadvantage of FLACS. This is a sign of robustness of our results.”
Study Authors
