Calculating costs of drug therapy: a review of a decade of literature (1977-1987).

Cost analysis and cost benefit analysis are useful tools in the objective comparison of drug therapy regimens. The authors report on their systematic evaluation of all available English language papers cited in the MEDLINE database from 1977 to February 1988 that were referenced under the medical subject headings, "costs and cost analysis" or "cost benefit analysis." The 94 papers that met the criteria for inclusion are described in a tabular summary of the approaches of calculating costs and methods of comparing relative costs of therapy for a variety of agents and disease entities. Additional references offering analyses of specific aspects of drug therapy which may provide practitioners with additional direction in analyzing costs of therapy, as well as a number of editorials and reviews offering useful insights and discussions regarding cost analysis, are also included.