| |
Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
 | |
|
Pharmacotherapy for people with Alzheimer's disease
— a Markov-cycle evaluation for five years' therapy using donepezil | | Author(s) | Alan Stewart, Richard Phillips, Graham Dempsey |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 13, no 7, July 1998 |
| Pages | pp 445-453 |
| Keywords | Drugs ; Dementia ; Cost effectiveness ; Mathematical models ; Evaluation ; Clinical surveys. |
| Annotation | This article combines data from a clinical trial of donepezil with costing figures to evaluate expected direct costs of care over 5 years after diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) for patients aged 75 and over at diagnosis. A Markov model simulates the progression of older people through changing levels of severity, and compares three treatment regimes for each of two patient groups: mild or moderate AD at start of treatment. Patients are followed until 5 years after the start of the treatment. Despite the acquisition costs, use of donepezil is approximately cost-neutral for both 5mg and 10 mg treatment groups, and for patients initially at either mild or moderate states of illness. Expected costs are slightly higher than for the placebo group, but higher expenditure on drugs is partly offset by lower costs of care consequent on treated patients not declining as rapidly as those untreated. The model showed that donepezil patients spent less time in the state of severe dementia, where costs of care are higher. Sensitivity analysis of key assumptions demonstrated that expected costs were highly dependent on discount rate and, more significantly, on the mortality rate. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-980810003 A |
| Classmark | LLD: EA: WEC: 3LM: 4C: 3G |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
|
| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
| |
|