Economic evaluations and diabetes.

Diabetes and its treatment have significant economic implications for society, as evidenced by estimated health expenditures for diabetes and its complications in the range of $85-$105 billion in the United States in 1992. With constrained resources, health care professionals need to understand the burden of any illness, benefits and costs of alternative treatments, and the process of combining benefits and costs for the purpose of comparing alternatives. The economic evaluation approach seems best suited for this task. Full and partial economic evaluation techniques will be reviewed with descriptions that have appeared in the recent diabetes literature.