Evaluating costs and outcomes in cardiovascular disease

Abstract

C oronary heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, implicated in 7.2 million deaths annually, according to the 1997 World Health Report*published by the World Health Organization. ¹ Thus, the treatment of cardiovascular disease imposes a large burden on most countries’ healthcare budgets. At the Second Annual International Meeting of the Association for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research [ Philadelphia, US; April 1997 ], US-based researchers presented data from a number of studies evaluating the costs of treatment, and the resulting patient outcomes, for cardiovascular diseases.