Real-world treatment pattern and outcomes among patients who took tapentadol IR or oxycodone IR

Abstract Objective: To evaluate differences in patient characteristics, healthcare resource utilization, and healthcare costs among patients receiving immediate release (IR) formulations of tapentadol (TAP IR) or oxycodone (OXY IR). Methods: Patients ( 18 years) who took TAP IR or OXY IR (6/1/2009-7/31/2011) were selected from the OptumInsight Clinformatics Data Mart claims database. Patients were assigned to the TAP IR or OXY IR cohort based on initial drug usage (index event). Continuous health plan coverage 60 days before (baseline period) and after (follow-up period) the index event was required. TAP IR patients were matched to OXY IR patients (1:1) using exact match of key patient characteristics and propensity score matching with patient demographics and clinical characteristics as covariates. T-test and chi-squared test were utilized to evaluate differences in patient characteristics, healthcare utilization and charges among cohorts. Results: Patient profiles during the baseline period significantly differed among TAP IR users (n = 17,539) and OXY IR users (n = 85,821) in the overall study population. The matched sample of TAP IR and OXY IR patients (n = 10,185 in both cohorts) had similar patient characteristics. During the 60-day follow-up period, patients who took TAP IR had a shorter mean hospital LOS (0.21 vs 0.35 days, p