Cost factors of early diagnostics and pharmacotherapy of Parkinson's disease

The costs of extrapyramidal diseases such as Parkinson's disease are continually on the increase in Germany and amounted to over Euro 2.3 billion in 2008. This represents an increase of 10.84% in comparison with 2006. Concerning the progressive nature of Parkinson's disease, three questions are posed and analysed in the scope of this article, namely how high are the annual costs for Parkinson's patients, whether the individual disease severities result in different costs and whether early diagnosis and treatment ceteris paribus not only represents a benefit for the patient, but also at the same time allows us to realise cost saving potentials. Based on the re-evaluation of existing studies and our own calculations it is shown that the costs per year and patient can amount to up to Euro 18680 (H&Y IV and V) and are significantly dependent on the disease severity. The discussion builds on this conclusion to establish whether early medicinal treatment and thus deceleration of the progress of the disease offers considerable cost saving potential.