[Cost of diabetes complications treatment: effect of improving glycemic control, blood pressure and lipid status on the occurrence of complications and costs of disease treatment].

Chronic complications of diabetes are the main cause of mortality and disability in people with diabetes, while also leading to growing healthcare system cost burdens. In order to analyze the effects of possible interventions on the health of population and their effectiveness in reducing the cost of the healthcare system, we have made health-economic models of diabetes chronic complications development. The models simulated long-term effect of improving glycemic control, blood pressure and lipid status in patients over a period of 10 years. The simulation results showed that the total savings over the analyzed period could amount to over 2 billion HRK, as effective long term control of risk factors leads to a reduction in the development of complications and death in people with diabetes. Successful treatments of patients provide a variety of savings for each of the chronic complications, and are obtained by simulating the biggest savings in the cost of hospitalization and rehabilitation. The cost-effectiveness analysis leads to the conclusion that the more intensive patient's control and earlier application of a treatment is cost-effective, and change of the healthcare system activities is a necessity.