Drink kidney stones away
Cost, in addition to efficacy and morbidity, has become an important factor in determining the best therapeutic modality for a variety of disease states.
The burden attributable to a disease can be large and include both direct (e.g. physician visit, laboratory tests, therapy, hospitalization) and indirect costs (e.g. lost work productivity/days, role function, reduced quality of life).
An alternative approach to decrease healthcare costs is health promotion and disease prevention, which have a major role to play in health policy worldwide.
How to know if my prevention strategy is worthy?
Factors to be considered include disease prevalence, morbidity and costs, as well as the cost-effectiveness* of the prevention strategy.
Let’s take the example of kidney stones!
In France, for example, total cost of one event of kidney stone is 4267€.(1)
This corresponds to an annual budget impact of 590 M€, imposing a huge economic burden to the healthcare system.(1)
Plain water consumption has many benefits, including decreasing the risk of both primary and recurrent kidney stones. Indeed, high water intake was associated with 20-40% decrease in kidney stones risk. (2)
Using a decision analytic model, it was estimated that if 100% of the French population drink 2L/day of water, 9265 kidney stones would be prevented, with an associated annual cost saving of € 273 million per year. Even if only 25% of the population is compliant, there is still a cost saving of €68 million and 9265 fewer kidney stones. (1)
Kidney stones prevention by increasing water intake can have significant cost savings for the healthcare system!
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