Costs

Loss of mobility. Loss of jobs. Diabetes takes an enormous toll on the body, which, in many cases, leads to compounding challenges. Some of the side effects of this disease can be devastating to mental health, careers and even families. Consider:

• Nearly all type 1 diabetes patients will experience progressive vision loss, with 20% to 30% becoming legally blind.
• About one-third will face deteriorating kidney function, kidney failure and dialysis or transplantation.
• More than 60% will suffer nerve damage leading to numbness, pain, weakness, or, in cases of peripheral artery disease, even limb amputation.
• Stroke, heart attack and other cardiovascular diseases are a major cause of death for diabetes patients.

Additionally, the economic costs are staggering.

• Direct and indirect costs of the disease add up to $132 billion annually. That figure includes not only healthcare expenses, but money lost as a result of complications, some of which can lead to job loss. These costs consume one of every ten healthcare dollars.
• Diabetes is associated with higher rates of lost work time, disability and premature mortality. The resulting economic loss to the U.S. economy in 2002 alone is estimated to be $40 billion.
• About one of every four federal Medicare dollars is spent caring for diabetes patients.

These figures do not account for the losses attributable to pain and suffering, as well as the losses of time and money to families and friends of diabetes patients.

The vision of the partnership between Spring Point Project and the Diabetes Institute for Immunology and Transplantation is that islet cell transplantation should become broadly available at an affordable price as quickly as possible.

Evidently, all transplant procedures concurrently are expensive. Therefore we have performed an exploratory health economic evaluation to study costs and cost-effectiveness of porcine islet cell transplantation in comparison with ongoing standard insulin treatment. Our first data from this study shows that over a 20-year follow up period islet cell transplantation can be cost-effective and with lower costs than standard insulin treatment.