Overall costs of thrombosis

January 30, 2007 8:19 AM

I’m looking for statistics from a reputable source describing the cost of both treatment and loss of wages/productivity or a combination of both (general financial burden) due to incidence of thrombosis and thrombotic disease.

Ideally, the sources will come from established journals or publications.

posted by Java_Man to health & fitness (4 comments total)

Treatment costs depend upon where you are and the exact treatment options used. You can start with the results of a PubMed search for "thrombosis cost" and tailor it to meet your specific needs. Some examples, all from reputable medical journals:

-Finland
-United Kingdom
-Sweden
-U.S. cancer patients
-Comparison of costs of different diagnostic methods in the U.S.

Figuring out lost wages/productivity is harder, if you want population averages. You might be abel to glean some from the aforementioned articles. If you are just looking for a rough figure for yourself or someone else, find out the average length of time lost and multiply it by that person's wage.

BTW, IANAD, nor an expert on thrombosis, but I do work in the health policy field.
posted by googly at 9:16 AM on January 30, 2007

Hi, thanks for the response. Yes, I am interested in finding, from a reputable source, the total amount of money spent (or lost) in the US each year treating thrombosis and thrombotic disease. Unfortunately, extrapolating the total cost based on estimates for individuals will not suffice for the reference.
Thanks, again.
posted by Java_Man at 10:41 AM on January 30, 2007

I am a health economics research analyst, and this is a pretty complicated question - more complicated than you think. The CDC has a good introduction to the issues and complexities here. Basically, there are lots of different ways to quantify "costs" and people disagree about the best definition and approach.

If you absolutely have to have a number, and it doesn't matter to you how accurate it is, the simplest approach would be to take the per-patient per-year cost found by a study like this one, then multiply it by the prevalence estimate for the disease.

Hope that helps.
posted by acridrabbit at 8:33 PM on January 30, 2007

Thanks, acidrabbit.
I agree that it's incredibly hard to assess something like this, and, to a large degree, it is very subjective. That's why I am looking for some reports from established groups that have examined the issue and who, ideally, explain their methodology in reaching their total (or range).
The report you cited from the CDC has these direct and indirect totals for some other diseases. It also goes into much greater detail with diabetes. This is exactly the type of thing I am looking for, but related to thrombosis.
Thanks, again.
posted by Java_Man at 7:56 AM on January 31, 2007