Health economics of heart failure

摘要

The pharmacoeconomics of heart failure are relatively easy to analyse for two reasons. Firstly, sufficient data on resource utilisation, such as hospital bed days or drug consumption, are available; net patient costs are easily identifiable and measurable in monetary terms. Secondly, the outcome, in terms of mortality, morbidity, and lost quality of life, is also straightforward to measure owing to a number of large clinical trials which have been performed in patients with heart failure. Despite this, however, very few pharmacoeconomic evaluations of β block-ers in heart failure have been carried out.