OBJECTIVES: The goal of this study is to determine the medical costs, comorbidity profile, and health care resources use of patients diagnosed with prostate cancer who have been treated in Spanish hospitals.

METHODS: The admission records of patients diagnosed with prostate cancer used in the study were recorded between January 2016 and December 2020. These records were collected from a Spanish hospital discharge database and evaluated in a retrospective multicenter analysis. All records of outpatient visits and hospital admissions were claimed using the corresponding ICD 10 codes.

RESULTS: A total of 8218 patients from the database met the criteria, with a median aged at the time of diagnosis of 71.68 years. The median Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) score was 4, and the updated median CCI was 3. Almost half of the patients were also diagnosed with hypertension (49.76%), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (37.03%) and hyperlipidemia (34.51%). The incidence was 30.72 per 10,000 habitants in 2016 and decreased significantly to 16.14 in 2020. The mean mortality rate was 9.30%, with a mortality rate of 10.45% in 2016 and a 7.69% in 2020. Some of the admissions were associated to some procedure. The most common medical procedure was prostate resection with percutaneous endoscopic approach (31.18%). The mean annual cost per admission was 5212.98€.

CONCLUSIONS: The study showed an improvement in patients' quality of life with the introduction of new technologies, such as the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test for screening, which has improved diagnosis over the past decades, leading to a decrease in the mortality rate of patients over the years. To improve detection, diagnosis and treatment, further research is needed to identify new technologies to treat the disease over time.