Abstract 4377: Economic burden of lung cancer patients in the emergency department

Introduction: In 2022, the National Cancer Institute estimated that more than 240,000 individuals will be diagnosed with lung or bronchus cancer. Many patients present to the emergency department (ED) for septicemia and pneumonia, which leads to long hospital stays. However, there is little data on the annual trends of hospital charges and risk factors for a high charge for these patients. Methods: We utilized the 2006-2012 Nationwide Emergency Department Sample to analyze the charges of lung cancer patients. Multivariate linear regressions were used to identify factors associated with higher ED and inpatient (IP) costs. The 20 most common primary diagnoses of these patients were included in the analysis to take into account the reason for the ED visit. Charges were corrected for inflation by normalizing to 2012 US Dollars. Results: During this time period, 1,344,817 lung cancer patients presented to the ED. Lung cancer patients were charged a cumulative of $3.06 billion in the ED and $38.6 billion in the IP setting. Annual cumulative ED charges increased by a factor of 2.5 from $575 million in 2006 to $1.42 billion in 2012 (p