ABSTRACT
Pharmacoeconomics is young rapidly developing science that uses economic, clinical and epidemiologic methods. It studies adequate use of therapeutics giving guidelines towards rational utilization of the resources in health care. Pharmacoeconomics indentifies estimates and compares costs and clinical outcomes of different strategies giving the best solution: optimal cost/benefit ratio. These studies can be used to estimate existing programs and plan the new ones. The aim of this paper was to carry out pharmacoeconomic study on the non-steroid anti-inflamatory drugs (NSAID) use in canton Tuzla, to compare costs of medication with highly selective cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2) inhibitors and nonselective NSAIDs and to calculate medication costs of the bleeding from upper parts of gastrointestinal tract. Study covers period from January to April 2004. Meta-analysis of selected clinical studies on safe and efficiency of NSAIDs was simultaneously conducted. Our results show that hospital treatment costs of the high-risk patients group significantly exceeds their potential medication costs with highly selective COX-2 inhibitors. Simultaneous use of non-selective NSAIDs with antacids has justification only in the low-risk group with mild gastrointestinal disturbances.
