Review article: economic issues in Crohn's disease - assessing the effectsof new treatments on health-related quality of life

The advent of highly effective yet costly new treatments for Crohn's diseas e will force clinicians, patients, and society to make important choices re garding the allocation of resources. Pharmacoeconomic analyses can be usefu l in deciding whether new technologies are of good value in comparison to e stablished treatment regimens. In Crohn's disease conventional cost-effecti veness analyses are of limited use because surgery, death, and disease-rela ted complications occur relatively infrequently. Alternatively, cost-utilit y models relate the incremental cost of new treatments to improvements in h ealth-related quality of life. These analyses require the collection of val id cost and utility inputs that have only recently become available. Ultima tely, cost-utility models should allow decision makers to make sensible cho ices for patients and society. This article describes the techniques of pha rmacoeconomic analysis and reviews existing data on the measurement of cost s and quality-of-life outcomes in Crohn's disease.