Differences in care trajectories in relation to amyloid PET

Using advanced statistical methods ABIDE-clinical utility builds on the public-private partnership with Life-MI to study how a more precise diagnosis by means of amyloid PET may yield health benefits. With 55 million patients with dementia worldwide, most caused by Alzheimer’s disease (AD), AD is among the largest societal challenges. The costs associated with dementia care are huge. To keep healthcare affordable and accessible, innovations are necessary. We hypothesized that a more precise diagnosis – in this case by adding amyloid PET to the diagnostic work-up –is beneficial for a patient, as an accurate diagnosis enables informed management planning, which subsequently leads to more fitting treatment, social interventions, prevention of avoidable hospitalizations, and a delay in institutionalization.

To study this hypothesis, we made use of a unique patient sample: We offered [18F]florbetaben (FBB) PET to all patients visiting our memory clinic in 2015/2016. During this period, roughly 450 patients underwent FBB PET and 450 did not. We took this ‘natural experiment’ as a starting point to study differences in care trajectories in relation to amyloid PET. We obtained information on use of care via (online) questionnaires and by linkage to CBS.

We demonstrated that (1) quantification of amyloid burden holds clinical value, (2) a more precise diagnosis leads to a better patient journey in terms of delay of institutionalization and mortality and lower health care costs, and we found that citizens were willing to pay for amyloid PET, particularly if this would lead to health benefit. These results were very timely, since they coincided with the first amyloid-targeting treatments being approved in the united states. This further contributes to the clinical utility of amyloid PET.