{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.03135593220338983, 'fraction_numerical': 0.00423728813559322, 'mean_word_length': 5.229551451187335, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Economic costs of epilepsy – treatment benefits

Definitions in health economics In health economics the total cost of illness is the sum of direct costs (for prevention, detection, treatment, rehabilitation) and of indirect costs (for lost production because of disability, or due to premature, excess mortality). The latter costs are reflected by sickness cash benefits, allowances or disability pensions, termed transferpayments. They should not be added to the indirect costs to avoid double-counting. The direct costs arise partly in the professional health sector; research, prevention, diagnosis, hospital payments, construction, personnel, drugs and partly in the non-professional sector; transportation, caring at home, items for rehabilitation. The last is said to add 9-16% to the total health costs (2). The indirect costs can be specified as due to production loss because of short/long term illness, disability, reduced skill, capacity, unpaid household work, assisting in convalescence, premature or excess death. The total cost can be estimated knowing the disease prevalences or incidences, or calculating the actual ill-health expenditures during a certain period. The costs of illness may be defined in relation to the gross domestic product, GDP. The total costs of any of the 17 disease categories listed by the International Classification of Diseases, WHO, may be calculated if prevalence data are known of any disease category. Discounting in health economics expresses the present value of future “capital”, goods, services or health, that anyone may expect to receive. A long delay in the delivery of the “health capital” increases the discount more than a short delay. 2-10%, often 4%, is used in estimating the present value of indirect costs for disability, unemployment and mortality. Some references to costs of diseases of the nervous system, DNS and of epilepsy, mainly from the USA and Sweden will be given below, with the intention of focusing attention on some economic costs of epilepsy, and on treatment benefits, aspects that arerarely dealt with in the literature usually read by clinicians. This presentation will then give some examples of actual recent direct and indirect costs of DNS and Epilepsy in Sweden together with some literature references to cost-benefit/effectiveness studies within the field of epilepsy.