Abstract
Purpose :
Currently, there is still no consensus on both dose and pattern of botulinum toxin injections in the treatment of benign essential blepharospasm (BEB). We compared the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of our standard treatment pattern versus a new one, which spares the injections in the inferior pretarsal orbicularis oculi muscle.
Methods :
In this prospective, monocentric study conducted between September and November 2022 52 adult patients with BEB were visited before (T0) and 2 months after (T2) the treatment. 25 patients received the standard treatment pattern (19 injections) and 27 the new one (17 injections). We used validated questionnaires to query patients on disease severity, frequency of symptoms, quality of life, pain perception and satisfaction with our care. We also compared the costs of our new procedure vs the standard one. Two-tailed t-test was used to test for differences in mean score changes from T0 to T2 in the standard vs new treatment. The study was approved by our local ethical board committee.
Results :
No statistically significant differences (all p>0.05) were recorded between T0 and T2 between the standard vs the new treatment groups for disease severity (1.35 ± 0.89 vs 1.08 ± 0.76), frequency of symptoms (1.23 ± 0.71 vs 0.96 ± 0.45), quality of life (3.56 ± 2.18 vs 3.43 ± 5.33), and satisfaction with care (31.6 ± 0.7 vs 31.3 ± 1.3).
On the contrary, statistically significant differences were recorded in mean rating for visual analogue (7.08 ± 1.29 vs 5.03 ± 1.94), verbal (2.2 ± 0.7 vs 1.52 ± 0.58), and numerical (6.96 ± 1.39 vs 4.88 ± 2.02) scales of pain perception for the standard vs new treatments, respectively (all p<0.001).
Finally, costs analysis showed that our new treatment pattern saved 23.60 euros for each session, a 21.05% reduction in price.
Conclusions :
Our new treatment pattern maintained a similar efficacy to the standard one in terms of disease control; however, the new treatment had a better tolerability and cost-effectiveness profile.
This abstract was presented at the 2023 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in New Orleans, LA, April 23-27, 2023.