Overview of costs of stroke from published, incidence-based studies spanning 16 industrialized countries.

Objective: The aim of this review is to summarize published data (based on a search of Medline sources, 1993-October 2003) from the last 10 years on the costs of stroke. With the recent encouraging evidence of interventions that reduce the incidence of stroke, the primary focus is on incidence-based cost of stroke studies to identify important factors for future cost-effectiveness analyses on stroke interventions.

Findings: Lifetime costs per patient were in the range USD 11 787 for 'unclassified' stroke in Australia to USD 3035671 in stroke patients with untreated non-rheumatic atrial fibrillation in a UK setting (costs inflated to 2003 values). For the lifetime costs of ischemic stroke only, the range narrowed to USD 41257 in Australia and USD 104629 in the UK. These data confirm that stroke management is associated with a vast economic burden. No correlation of lifetime cost of stroke with specific cost components or time horizon was identified. The cost of stroke is influenced by severity (more severe strokes cost more due to extended hospitalization), age (costs were greater in younger stroke patients) and gender (direct costs were greater for women, but indirect costs were greater in men).

Conclusion: Conducting research according to methodological consensus would markedly improve the quality of data from future studies of stroke and support identification of the main cost drivers in different country-specific settings.