ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 8, 1997 TAG: 9702100042
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ANAHEIM, CALIF.
SOURCE: Associated Press|
Strokes, the No. 3 killer after heart disease and cancer, are an economic disaster as well as a medical one, costing an average of $103,576 over the lifetime of each victim, an analysis shows.
Strokes kill about 150,000 Americans annually. They are a huge source of disability as well, since many survivors are left crippled, speechless and otherwise unable to care for themselves.
A report Friday at the 22nd International Joint Conference on Stroke and Cerebral Circulation totes up the cost of this in medical bills and lost earnings. Thomas Taylor of the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy developed a computer simulation of a stroke's lifetime economic burden.
He based his work on Medicare and private insurance data from 1990. At that time, strokes were untreatable, at least in the hours after the attack. However, in the past year, hospitals have started giving TPA - a widely used heart attack drug - to some victims of strokes that result from clots in the brain.
Taylor's study shows that the cost of a stroke varies, depending on the type. About 80 percent of strokes result from blood clots that block arteries in the brain, starving tissue of oxygen and nutrients. The rest are caused by burst blood vessels.
So-called subarachnoid hemorrhages are especially expensive, because victims are often younger. Other bleeding strokes are intracerebral hemorrhages, which result from burst blood vessels deeper inside the brain.
According to Taylor, the total lifetime cost of first-time strokes in the United States is $41billion. In a separate analysis, Dr. Robert Holloway of the University of Rochester used different statistical methods to arrive at a remarkably similar total stroke cost of $40 billion in 1997.
LENGTH: Short : 41 linesby CNB