As a health economist, with a particular interest in the economic evaluation of drugs, I was pleased to read the article “Cost-effectiveness of rivaroxaban for stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation in the Portuguese setting” by Morais et al. in volume 33, issue 9, of the Journal.1
It is increasingly clear that as well as the criteria of efficacy, safety and quality that are required for market authorization, the cost-effectiveness of a drug should also be taken into consideration. This is essential to ensure the best use of resources and thus better health outcomes.
Of course, this objective can only be fully achieved if the medical community has access to studies published in journals of recognized scientific quality and prestige.
However, despite improvements over the last 15 years, a significant proportion of the medical community lacks the necessary tools to perform a critical analysis of a study's results or to identify factors that could affect them. It is thus essential that at least the main parameters used in a particular study should be explained in a transparent fashion.
As the lead author of the article “Economic evaluation of dabigatran for stroke prevention in patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation”, published in volume 32, issue 7–8, of the Journal,2 I carried out a careful analysis of the results presented by Morais et al. Comparison between the two studies showed that the differences stem from the different financial costs assigned to monitoring patients under warfarin. As readers will naturally compare the two articles, I consider it essential that the authors of the cost-effectiveness study of rivaroxaban clearly specify this parameter.
I would also like to point out that there appears to be an error in Table 4 (“Cost-effectiveness results of base-case analysis”) of the article by Morais et al. In this table, the authors report the total costs for both drugs and separate costs for drug acquisition, drug administration, and event treatment. However, the sum of the latter does not equal the total.
Ethical disclosuresProtection of human and animal subjectsThe authors declare that no experiments were performed on humans or animals for this investigation.
Confidentiality of dataThe authors declare that no patient data appears in this article.
Right to privacy and informed consentThe authors declare that no patient data appears in this article.
Conflicts of interestThe author has no conflicts of interest to declare.
Please cite this article as: Miguel LS. Comentário a estudo de custo-efetividade de rivaroxabano para prevenção de acidente vascular cerebral em doentes com fibrilhação auricular em Portugal. Rev Port Cardiol. 2015;34:705–706.
