Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the direct and indirect costs of selected cardiovascular diseases, namely hypertension (HT), metabolic syndrome (MS) and diabetes mellitus (DM) in the Slovak Republic.
Methods and results: This study analyzes the data of 1,000 patients, randomly selected from NEMESYS database (10,300 patients). Average direct pharmacotherapeutic costs of hypertension per year were 257 Euros in men and 264 Euros in women. Costs of metabolic syndrome were 334 Euros in men and 321 Euros in women. Finally, the costs of diabetes mellitus were 392 Euros in men and 384 Euros in women. The most expensive pharmacotherapy was used in patients with a combination of all three diagnoses (HT+MS+DM), namely 452 Euros in men and 455 Euros in women. Indirect costs represent an even more serious financial burden. The highest indirect costs were in patients with diabetes mellitus, namely 5,227 Euros in men and 5,365 Euros in women.
Conclusions: The study proved the assumption of increasing the direct pharmacotherapeutic costs in correlation with the increased severity of disease. The gender differences on the other hand, were smaller in patients with more serious conditions. The indirect costs represented the greatest financial burden, and were 13 to 17 times higher than the direct pharmacotherapeutic costs (Tab. 4, Ref. 17).