Comparative study of costs and resource utilisation of rotational atherectomy versus intravascular lithotripsy for percutaneous coronary intervention.

BACKGROUND Intravascular lithotripsy (IVL) is a novel alternative to rotational atherectomy (RA) for the modification of heavily calcified coronary stenoses prior to percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). We compare the real-world resource utilisation and associated costs of PCI with adjunctive RA and IVL. METHODS We compared the resource utilisation, in-lab consumable costs and procedural data of 120 patients who underwent PCI with IVL from the Disrupt-CAD II study (NCT03328949) to 60 patients who underwent PCI with RA at the Golden Jubilee National Hospital, Glasgow. The RA patients were consecutive and selected on the basis of being deemed suitable for IVL by an independent interventional cardiologist experienced in the use of both techniques. RESULTS PCI with IVL was associated with significantly lower costs than PCI with RA (mean difference £398 [95% CI, £181-£615]; p<0.001). Considering between-group differences, the IVL group used 4.02 fewer balloons (p<0.001), 3.03 fewer guidewires (p<0.001), 0.52 fewer guide catheters (p=0.001), 0.22 fewer guide extensions (p=0.004) and 1.03 fewer drug eluting stents (DES) (p<0.001) per case than the RA group. The IVL group had shorter procedural duration (mean difference 13.3 min [95% CI, 3.6-23.0]; p=0.008) but longer fluoroscopy times (mean difference 4.4 min [95% CI, 1.7-7.1]; p=0.002). CONCLUSIONS In this indirect comparison, we found that the higher initial device costs of IVL may be offset by a lower overall resource utilisation. Further research is required to confirm this, and future randomised trials should include a formal health economic analysis.