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Editors Selection IGR 24-3

Cooperation with medical therapy: Refill rates

Comment by Angelo Tanna on:

19788 Refill rates and budget impact of glaucoma lipid therapy: A retrospective database analysis, Walt JG; Wilensky JT; Fiscella R et al., Clinical Drug Investigation, 2007; 27: 819-825

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In this cross sectional study Walt et al. (1548) retrospectively utilized the Wolters Kluwer Health Retail Pharmacy Database to evaluate refill rates in the US for bimatoprost (BP), latanoprost (LP), and travoprost (TP) among patients who filled such a prescription between September and December 2002. Patients were assumed to have been receiving continuous treatment if they had at least one prescription refill for the same agent one year later, between September and December 2003. Among those patients (n = 95,417, 83.7% using LP), refill rates were determined and used to calculate cost per patient year (using average wholesale price) and annual refill cost differences among the three prostaglandin analogs.

The authors found that the mean number of days between refills was significantly greater for BP (52 d) and TP (54 d) compared to LP (47 d), resulting in substantial cost-savings with BP and TP. The fact that patients using BP and TP refill their prescriptions less frequently than those using LP can most likely be explained by either a difference in patient adherence rates to the various medications or by a difference in the number of usable drops per bottle among the three agents. In their discussion, the authors attribute the difference in refill rates to the latter explanation, and this is reasonably well supported by the literature.^1-3

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