Cost of informal care for patients with cardiovascular disease or diabetes: current evidence and research challenges

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Qual Life Res
• Personal Author:
  Joo, Heesoo ; Zhang, Ping ; Wang, Guijing
• Description:
  Purpose
  
  Patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD) or diabetes often require informal care. The burden of informal care, however, was not fully integrated into economic evaluation. We conducted a literature review to summarize the current evidence on economic burden associated with informal care imposed by CVD or diabetes.
  
  Methods
  
  We searched EconLit, EMBASE, and PubMed for publications in English during the period of 1995 to 2015. Keywords for the search were informal care cost, costs of informal care, informal care, and economic burden. We excluded studies that (1) did not estimate monetary values, (2) examined methods or factors affecting informal care, or (3) did not address CVD or diabetes.
  
  Results
  
  Our search identified 141 potential abstracts and, 10 of the articles met our criteria. Although little research has been conducted, studies used different methods without much consensus, estimates suffered from recall bias, and study samples were small, the costs of informal care have been found high. In 2014 US dollars, estimated additional annual costs of informal care per patient ranged from $1,563 to $7,532 for stroke, $860 for heart failure, and $1,162 to $5,082 for diabetes. The total cost of informal care were ranged from $5,560 to $143,033 for stoke, $12,270 to $20,319 for heart failure, and $1,192 to $1,321 for diabetes.
  
  Conclusions
  
  The costs of informal care are substantial, and excluding them from economic evaluation would underestimate economic benefits of interventions for the prevention of CVD and diabetes.
  
  
• Subjects:
  Cardiovascular Diseases Cost Of Illness Diabetes Mellitus Female Health Care Costs Humans Patient Care Quality Of Life Research Stroke
• Source:
  Qual Life Res. 26(6):1379-1386.
• Pubmed ID:
  27995368
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC5507592
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  CC999999/Intramural CDC HHS/United States
• Volume:
  26
• Issue:
  6
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:2bdcf1eb09727488350f459868a7d4c4478407e6a86bd8d482c7350b625e971f
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/46706/cdc_46706_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 531.32 KB ]