[Analysis of hypercholesterolemia care costs in primary health care]

1) To calculate the care costs of Hypercholesterolaemia in Primary Care in terms of the number of visits to the doctor, analyses and drugs. 2) To calculate the effectiveness of the intervention.

A retrospective study.

Primary Care Centre.

97 histories of patients diagnosed as having Hypercholesterolaemia, obtained by systematic sampling from the Centre's morbidity register, were analysed. A control with the same age, sex and risk factors was chosen for each one of them.

The study period was 12 months. For those patients diagnosed as having Hypercholesterolaemia after the opening of the centre, the initial figures and those at the end of the study for total Cholesterol, LDL Cholesterol (cLDL) and HDL cholesterol (cHDL) were analysed.

There were no differences between the demographic characteristics and the risk factors of the cases and controls. An excess of attendances (average of 9.0 against 6.0, p = 0.01), of hypolipaemic and non-hypolipaemic drugs (average of 4.0 against 3.0, p = 0.006) and of analyses (average of 2.0 against 0.0, p = 0.0001) were detected for the cases. The following variations were found between the initial and final figures: for total Cholesterol (-7.2%, p = 0.001), for cLDL (-11.6%, p = 0.006) and cHDL (+18.2%, p < 0.0001).

1) Hypercholesterolaemia care in a mainly selective manner for people at high risk was shown to be reasonably effective and affordable. 2) Before starting other strategies for detecting Hypercholesterolaemia, adequate prioritisation and evaluation of their impact on health-care delivery are required.