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).