New and old anti-thrombotic treatments for patients with atrial fibrillation

Appendix

To improve our analysis we incorporated the parameters of both scenarios into a rudimental model that has previously been proposed for budget-impact predictions [10, 11]; its equations are as follows:

$$ {\text{PTS}} = {\text{TARGET}} \times \left( { 1- {\text{e}}^{{ - 0. 6 9 3/{\text{HLgrowth }} \times {\text{ time}}}} } \right) $$

(1)

where PTS = patients being treated at time t; TARGET = yearly population receiving the treatment; HLgrowth = half-life of the process of drug uptake (or switched from warfarin) in the market

$$ \left( {\text{nationwide yearly expenditure}} \right) = \left( {\text{yearly cost per patient}} \right) \, \times {\text{ PTS}}_{\text{time}} $$

(2)

By using this model, the time-course of the expected incremental expenditure from 2012 to 2016 had the pattern shown in Fig. 1 (Scenario A = solid line; Scenario B = dotted line). These predictions have considered dabigatran, but are intended to represent the entire class of new anticoagulants as other agents are approved. The yearly cost of dabigatran has been set at EUR 900.