Major Diabetes Complications Have an Impact on Total Annual Medical Cost of Type 2 Diabetes
- Andrea Morsanutto, PHARMD1,
- Patrizia Berto, PHARMD, MBA2,
- Stefania Lopatriello, PHARMD2,
- Dario Voinovich, PHD3,
- Renzo Gelisio, MD4 and
- Lorenzo G. Mantovani, MSC, DSC1
- 1Center of Pharmacoeconomics, Department of Pharmacological Sciences, University of Milan, Milan, Italy
- 2PBE Consulting, Verona, Italy
- 3Department of Pharmacological Sciences, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy
- 4Diabetologic Center, ULSS 10 Portogruarese, Portogruaro, Italy
- Address correspondence to Dr. Lorenzo G. Mantovani, Center of Pharmacoeconomics, Department of Pharmacological Sciences, University of Milan, Via Balzaretti, 9 I-20133 Milan, Italy. E-mail: lorenzo.mantovani{at}unimi.it
Brandle et al. (1) found that the occurrence of diabetes-related comorbidities in type 2 diabetic patients are associated with an increase in average annual medical cost.
To investigate the medical cost attributable to type 2 diabetes, we conducted a retrospective longitudinal cost-of-care study in a diabetologic center in Italy. A priori, we estimated to validly enroll 300 type 2 diabetic patients with at least 1 year of follow-up. To this aim, we randomly selected 315 type 2 diabetic patients from a base of ∼2,000 diabetic patients attending the diabetologic center of Portogruaro during the period from January 2001 to August 2002.
Cost included hospitalizations, visits, diagnostics, and pharmacological therapies and were quantified in …
