title: Cost per millimeter of mercury lowering is a measure of economic value for antihypertensive agents.
abstract: The use of pharmacoeconomic analyses to evaluate the appropriateness of treatment regimens is increasing rapidly. Trials that study the efficacy of antihypertensive agents do not often measure long-term cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, so complementary methods are needed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of these agents. One method is to compare agents on the basis of their costs and blood pressure-lowering efficacy, producing a ratio of cost per millimeter of mercury lowering, or cost/mm Hg. This provides a simple, transparent method with which to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of antihypertensive agents. It also allows the cost-effectiveness of a blood pressure treatment to be assessed in terms of ambulatory blood pressure data. The use of cost/mm Hg requires assumptions that tolerability of agents is comparable and that blood pressure lowering is a valid surrogate for cardiovascular risk reduction. Given the emergence of new treatments that have differences in blood pressure efficacy, cost/mm Hg is likely to become increasingly used as an indicator of economic value.
authors.affiliation: Pharmaceutical Research Institute, Bristol-Myers Squibb, P.O. Box 4000, Princeton, NJ 08543-4000, USA.
authors.forename: R S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Lapuerta
mesh_terms: D000959:Antihypertensive Agents / Q000191:economics* / Q000627:therapeutic use; D001794:Blood Pressure / Q000187:drug effects*; D018660:Blood Pressure Monitoring, Ambulatory / Q000191:economics; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D004359:Drug Therapy, Combination; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000191:economics* / Q000503:physiopathology; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000191:economics*
chemical_list: D000959:Antihypertensive Agents