A Systematic Review of Direct Cardiovascular Event Costs: An International Perspective

Introduction There is a lack of comprehensive cost information for cardiovascular events since 2013. Objective A systematic review on the contemporary cost of cardiovascular events was therefore undertaken. Methods Methods complied with those recommended by the Cochrane Collaboration and the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination. Studies were unrestricted by language, were from 2013 to 23 December 2017, and included cost-of-illness data in adults with the following cardiovascular conditions: myocardial infarction (MI), stroke, transient ischaemic attack (TIA), heart failure (HF), unstable angina (UA), coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), or peripheral artery disease (PAD). Seven electronic databases were searched, namely Embase (Ovid), MEDLINE (Ovid), MEDLINE In-Process Citations and Daily Update (Ovid), NHS Economic Evaluation Database (NHS EED), Health Technology Assessment (HTA) database, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), and PubMed. The included studies reported data from a variety of years (sometimes prior to 2013), so costs were inflated and converted to $US, year 2018 values, for standardization. Results After de-duplication, 29,945 titles and abstracts and then 403 full papers were screened; 82 studies (88 papers) were extracted. Year 1 average cost ranges were as follows: MI ($11,970 in Sweden to $61,864 in the USA), stroke ($10,162 in Spain to $46,162 in the USA), TIA ($6049 in Sweden to $25,306 in the USA), HF ($4456 in China to $49,427 in the USA), UA ($11,237 in Sweden to $31,860 in the USA), PCI ($17,923 in Italy to $45,533 in the USA), CABG ($17,972 in the UK to $76,279 in the USA). One Swedish study reported PAD costs in a format convertible to $US, 2018 values, with a mean annual cost of $15,565. Conclusions There was considerable unexplained variation in contemporary costs for all major cardiovascular events. One emerging theme was that average costs in the USA were considerably higher than anywhere else.