@article{ref1,
title="Economic impact on health-care costs related to major diseases including HIV/AIDS due to alcohol drinking among Thai populations",
journal="Value in health",
year="2009",
author="Neramitpitagkul, Prapag and Lertpitakpong, Chanida and Yothasamut, Jomkwan and Thavorncharoensap, Montarat and Chaikledkaew, Usa and Teerawattananon, Yot",
volume="12",
number="Suppl 3",
pages="S97-S100",
abstract="OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to estimate health-care costs because of diseases caused by alcohol consumption based on health system's perspective. METHODS: Total direct health-care costs of alcohol drinking were the summation of the costs of alcohol drinking in inpatient and outpatient departments due to chronic diseases and acute conditions using prevalence-based approach. The alcohol-attributable fractions, defined as the proportion of a disease or acute condition in a population attributable to alcohol drinking, were calculated to obtain the number of patients in each disease or acute condition attributable to alcohol drinking. Health-care costs of alcohol drinking were estimated by multiplying the number of patients in each disease category attributable to alcohol drinking with the unit cost of treatment. RESULTS: Total health-care costs attributed to alcohol in this research were 5491 million baht (i.e., outpatient department [2488 million baht] and inpatient department [3003 million baht]). Cost derived from inpatient department accounted for 55% of the total health-care cost attributed to alcohol. CONCLUSIONS: The result of this study suggested that alcohol drinking was significantly associated with a large number of health-care costs in Thailand. Estimation of health-care costs related to alcohol drinking would provide an important insight into future policy appraisal and evaluation.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1098-3015",
doi="10.1111/j.1524-4733.2009.00638.x",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1524-4733.2009.00638.x"
}