A primer on cost-effectiveness analyses for vascular surgeons.

The rate of growth in health care costs in the United States is simply unsustainable. In this economic climate, health care providers will increasingly be asked to justify the existence of health care programs and management strategies on an economic basis. An understanding of cost-effectiveness analyses and its components - direct and indirect costs, quality-adjusted life-years, and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios - is integral to this. We present a primer on the methodology of cost-effectiveness analyses and a review of published cost-effectiveness analyses of vascular surgery interventions with the goal of providing the vascular surgeon with a basic understanding of this topic.