Cost-effectiveness of endoscopic, surgical and pharmacological obesity therapies: a microsimulation and threshold analyses

Abstract

Objective: Weight loss interventions to treat obesity include sleeve gastrectomy (SG), lifestyle intervention (LI), endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty (ESG) and semaglutide. We aimed to identify which treatments are cost-effective and identify requirements for semaglutide to be cost-effective.

Design: We developed a semi-Markov microsimulation model to compare the effectiveness of SG, ESG, semaglutide and LI for weight loss in 40 years old with class I/II/III obesity. Extensive one-way sensitivity and threshold analysis were performed to vary cost of treatment strategies and semaglutide adherence rate. Outcome measures were incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs), with a willingness-to-pay threshold of US$100 000/quality-adjusted life-year (QALY).

Results: When strategies were compared with each other, ESG was cost-effective in class I obesity (US$4105/QALY). SG was cost-effective in class II obesity (US$5883/QALY) and class III obesity (US$7821/QALY). In class I/II/III, obesity, SG and ESG were cost-effective compared with LI. However, semaglutide was not cost-effective compared with LI for class I/II/III obesity (ICER US$508 414/QALY, US$420 483/QALY and US$350 637/QALY). For semaglutide to be cost-effective compared with LI, it would have to cost less than US$7462 (class III), US$5847 (class II) or US$5149 (class I) annually. For semaglutide to be cost-effective when compared with ESG, it would have to cost less than US$1879 (class III), US$1204 (class II) or US$297 (class I) annually.

Conclusions: Cost-effective strategies were: ESG for class I obesity and SG for class II/III obesity. Semaglutide may be cost-effective with substantial cost reduction. Given potentially higher utilisation rates with pharmacotherapy, semaglutide may provide the largest reduction in obesity-related mortality.

Keywords: gastrectomy; gastrointestinal surgery; obesity.