Social Cost of Brain Tumor-Related Epilepsy

Today, health-care professionals everywhere understand the necessity of placing illness, treatment alternatives, and most importantly, patients' well-being, in a political, economic, and social context. Difficulties in evaluating the socioeconomic factors related to single illnesses have been well documented, but no model exists yet for evaluating costs related to a pathology that involves two serious illnesses simultaneously (e.g., brain tumor-related epilepsy (BTRE). Published cost studies have addressed either brain tumor or epilepsy-but there is no health economic study (to our knowledge) regarding BTRE. This chapter offers an overview of basic health economic concepts with examples of prevalent types of economic studies; a discussion of issues that influence policy and funding decisions; a brief introduction to health technology assessment as relating to costs of pharmacological therapies; and a presentation of social/economic costs related to neurological disorders, epilepsy, and brain tumors (there are no such data for BTRE).