ABSTRACT
For the first edition of this book, it was felt necessary to justify the very need for costeffectiveness information and even the basic methods had to be described. Since then, economic analysis of healthcare interventions has become mainstream and there have been considerable advances in the evaluations of statin use and other interventions to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, both in methodological terms and in the number of interventions, populations and countries that have been analysed.1-52 Indeed, there are now several reviews of the published cost-effectiveness analyses,21-28 and these have generally concluded that statin use can be cost-effective in many situations. Now decision makers face the challenge of dealing with the profusion of information in order to assess the implications for local budgets29-47 and even the choice of statin.4,7,9,15,26,28,44 Despite the numerous publications on the subject, however, the standards to be used in such judgements remain ill defined.
