From cost of illness to cost-effectiveness in heart failure.

Congestive heart failure is a severe condition responsible for 1%-2% of total health expenditure. In France, three-quarters of the medical cost of congestive heart failure, i.e. FF7 billion, is attributed to 150000 annual hospital admissions. But new treatments, especially ACE inhibitors and beta-blockers, have demonstrated, through large controlled trials (SAVE, AIRE, US trials on carvedilol and CIBIS I) that these drugs can reduce mortality and hospitalization. These results, translated in terms of cost per life year saved, show that they are all very cost effective and could be cost saving, under some conditions.