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I costi del dolore cronico/ricorrente in medicina generale

Costs of chronic/recurrent pain in general practice

  • Published:
PharmacoEconomics Italian Research Articles

Summary

Objectives

To estimate the cost of chronic pain in Italian general practice from a payer perspective.

Design

A retrospective study of two months’ duration.

Methods

48 General Practitioners (GPs) in Italy recruited 543 patients who attended a consultation during the period January–September 2001. Afterwards, patients were classified in three groups according to drugs’ prescriptions: Group 1 (173 patients not treated with NSAIDs), Group 2 (285 patients treated with non selective NSAIDs only), and Group 3 (85 patients treated with at least one selective NSAID). Considered costs included drugs, diagnostic procedures, laboratory tests, and hospital admissions. GPs were asked to split all costs into two categories: i) costs related to pain; ii) costs related to gastrointestinal (GI) adverse events.

Main outcome measures and results

Patients of Group 3 were significantly older than the others and had a higher proportion of ostheoarthritis as diagnosis. Differences between mean costs per patient by group (Group 1 € 26.47, Group 2 € 103.67, Group 3 € 139.00) were significant. Costs of Group 3 were higher also when the analysis was limited to GI adverse events (Group 3 € 6.83, Group 2 € 4.42, Group 1 € 1.10).

Conclusions

This study is a first attempt to assess costs of chronic pain in Italy. Further studies with a longer time horizon should follow in the future to assess the robustness of results.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro di Economia Sanitaria CESAV, Istituto Mario Negri, Villa Camozzi, Ranica, Bergamo, Italia

    Livio Garattini, D. Roggeri, D. Lanzeni & C. Viscarra

  2. Centro di Ricerca in Medicina Generale, CSeRMEG, Monza, Milano, Italia

    V. Caimi

  3. Unità di Epidemiologia Analitica, Istituto Mario Negri, Milano, Italia

    S. Cipriani

Authors
  1. Livio Garattini
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  2. V. Caimi
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  3. S. Cipriani
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  4. D. Roggeri
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  5. D. Lanzeni
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  6. C. Viscarra
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Gruppo di Studio Pa.Co.

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Correspondence to Livio Garattini.

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Garattini, L., Caimi, V., Cipriani, S. et al. I costi del dolore cronico/ricorrente in medicina generale. Pharmacoeconomics-Ital-Res-Articles 6, 39–46 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03320621

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