Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Feb 27;49(2):270-276.
doi: 10.1093/ageing/afz162.

Estimated societal costs of stroke in the UK based on a discrete event simulation

Anita Patel  1   2 , Vladislav Berdunov  3 , Zahidul Quayyum  4 , Derek King  5 , Martin Knapp  5 , Raphael Wittenberg  5
Affiliations

Estimated societal costs of stroke in the UK based on a discrete event simulation

Anita Patel et al. Age Ageing. .

Abstract

Background: there are around 100,000 new stroke cases and over a million people living with its consequences annually in the UK. This has large impacts on health and social care, unpaid carers and lost productivity. We aimed to estimate associated costs.

Methods: we estimated 2014/2015 annual mean cost per person and aggregate UK cost of stroke for individuals aged ≥40 from a societal perspective. Health and social care costs in the first and subsequent years after stroke were estimated from discrete event simulation modelling, with probability of progression and length of receipt of different health and social care services obtained from routine registry and audit data. Unpaid care hours and lost productivity were obtained from trial data. UK unit costs were applied to estimate mean costs. Epidemiological estimates of stroke incidence and prevalence were then applied to estimate aggregate costs for the UK.

Results: mean cost of new-onset stroke is £45,409 (95% CI 42,054-48,763) in the first year after stroke and £24,778 (20,234-29,322) in subsequent years. Aggregate societal cost of stroke is £26 billion per year, including £8.6 billion for NHS and social care. The largest component of total cost was unpaid care (61%) and, given high survival, £20.6 billion related to ongoing care.

Conclusion: the estimated aggregate cost of stroke substantially exceeds previous UK estimates. Since most of the cost is attributed to unpaid care, interventions aimed at rehabilitation and reducing new and recurrent stroke are likely to yield substantial benefits to carers and cost savings to society.

Keywords: burden; cost; economic; older people; simulation; stroke.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

None.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Pathways represented in the NGC model.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. The GBD 2016 Lifetime Risk of Stroke Collaborators . Global, regional, and country-specific lifetime risks of stroke, 1990 and 2016. NEJM 2018; 379: 2429–37. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Rothwell PM, Coull AJ, Giles MFet al. Change in stroke incidence, mortality, case-fatality, severity, and risk factors in Oxfordshire, UK from 1981 to 2004 (Oxford vascular study). Lancet 2004; 363: 1925–33. - PubMed
    1. Stroke Association . State of the nation: stroke statistics. London: Stroke Association, 2016.
    1. Geddes JM, Fear J, Tennant Aet al. Prevalence of self reported stroke in a population in northern England. J Epidemiol Community Health 1996; 50: 140–3. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Saka O, McGuire A, Wolfe C. Cost of stroke in the United Kingdom. Age Ageing 2009; 38: 27–32. - PubMed

Publication types