Cost-effectiveness of treatments for Alzheimer's dementia.

Care of dementia is extremely resource demanding and has a great impact on both the formal care systems and the situation for informal carers. Thus, the question of cost-effectiveness is crucial. This presentation is, to a great extent, based on the dementia project by the Swedish council on technology assessment in health care. After the database search and quality judgment of papers, 22 papers of drug treatment were finally included. A summary of the situation as regards cost-effectiveness on drugs for Alzheimer's disease showed that no evidence could be stated on empirical studies. Although most modeling studies indicate cost-effectiveness, this was not regarded as enough support for cost-effectiveness since the empirical studies were inconclusive. The need for larger empirical studies of high standards of quality and modeling studies including an enlarged sensitivity analysis, is evident.