S64 The Cost of Refractory Asthma in the UK - a Preliminary Analysis

<h3>Introduction</h3> Refractory asthma poses a potentially significant burden in terms of healthcare costs. Relatively little is known about the cost of treatment or what factors explain variations in treatment costs. This study uses data from the British Thoracic Society (BTS) Difficult Asthma Registry to estimate the healthcare costs associated with a sample of well-characterised refractory asthmatics and examines the role of a range of factors in explaining variations in healthcare. <h3>Methods</h3> In this analysis data were extracted from the Registry on 689 patients and examined healthcare utilisation including all prescribed medicines, hospital inpatient stays, ITU stays, A&amp;E/GP visits and CT scans over a 12 month period prior to the patient first being assessed at the specialist clinics. Patient characteristics included…