Chronicle diseases are drivers of an high amount of health expenditure, considering that patients need to be treated lifelong. Thus, the economic assessment techniques could be helpful to allocate budget resources in order to treat the larger number of patients according to cost-effective criteria.
This paper is meant at analysing the role of cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) in decision making processes related to the therapeutical choice in case of a chronicle disease, such as rheumatoid arthritis (AR). It is based on the literature review of previous studies on AR, both clinical studies and pharmacoeconomics studies. AR is characterized by a large prevalence in most of the developed countries, high pharmaceutical costs, different therapeutical strategies combining conventional drugs and biological drugs (the latter, very expensive for the health system), disability of the patients compromising the quality of life.
The paper is organized in four main sections: the introduction to the main contents, the description of the pathology characteristics and its economical impact in some of the main countries, the disease treatment's options, the cost-effective analysis of AR. Finally, the conclusion section points out the role that CEA could have in healthcare decision making process both for patients and for society perspective, as well as the research gap to be filled.