A Case for Using Pharmacoeconomic Analysis to Assess the Cost-Effectiveness of Metronidazole for Pseudomembranous Colitis

Abstract

Pharmacoeconomic analysis, defined as the description and analysis of the costs of drug therapy to health-care systems and society, will become a vital tool in making economic determinations for drug therapy. In a time when health-care costs continue to soar, the practical benefits of using a discipline such as pharmacoeconomics become evident. Managed care companies will use pharmacoeconomics as a tool to compare drugs that are clinically equal in safety and effectiveness. Institutions will be able to provide therapies with similar outcomes at more competitive prices. For example, a comparison of oral metronidazole to oral vancomycin, the standard of care for treating pseudomembranous colitis, provides the type of information required to perform such an analysis. A case can be made for metronidazole's use in the initial treatment of pseudomembranous colitis, as it is a less expensive agent with similar effectiveness as oral vancomycin. The techniques employed for pharmacoeconomics include cost-benefit analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-utility analysis, and quality-of-life analysis. A 10-step approach considers drug costs, hospitalization costs, efficacy, and relapse rates and provides an easy framework for constructing useful pharmacoeconomic models based upon the researcher's criteria.