ABSTRACT
The primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular diseases and, therefore, the therapy of hyperlipidemia is essential in strategies to lower morbidity and mortality from coronary heart disease (CHD), the most relevant atherosclerosis-associated disease. These programs imply not only a medical but also an economic challenge to our health system. That is why all therapeutic measures have to be evaluated regarding their cost-effectiveness. A cost-effectiveness profile was calculated for all the therapies of hyperlipidemia (nutritional therapy, dietetic nutritionals, drugs and LDL-apheresis) with respect to the following parameters: total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol and triglycerides. The daily costs of all interventional measures are compared to the success rate, whereby an index of daily therapy costs and 1% change per lipid parameter was calculated. Nutritional therapy is by far the cheapest, and LDL-apheresis the most expensive but also the most effective and reliable therapeutic measure. It has to be considered, however, that dietary intervention can be very successful in overnutrition while in rare cases of severe homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia there is no therapeutic alternative to LDL-apheresis. Life-style modifications, such as changing nutritional habits, may contribute towards reducing or removing one or more risk factor(s) (e.g. malnutrition is associated with overweight, hyperlipoproteinemia (HLP), hyperinsulinemia (syndrome X), hyperfibrinogenemia and hypertension). But neither health politicians nor the population seem to be conscious of the fact that life-style changes help to reduce medical expenditure. Considering the fact that nearly every medical service is getting more and more expensive, the need to introduce financial regulations is evident.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
