Quality assessment of economic analyses of pharmacological and nutritional therapy for hyperlipidemia.

Our objective was to evaluate the quality of published pharmacoeconomic studies of lipid-lowering therapies. A 13-item evaluation checklist was used to assess the quality of articles. Two reviewers assessed each article. Discrepancies in ratings were resolved using a third reviewer. Potential scores on each item ranged from 0 to 4 and 50 articles met our inclusion criteria. Mean quality scores ranged from 1.73 to 3.89. Treatment and policy implications are: secondary prevention is more cost-effective than primary prevention, the cost-effectiveness of lipid-lowering treatments correlates with risk-factors and statin drugs are more cost-effective than cholesterol-sequestering agents. This review provides a summarization of the literature regarding the cost-effectiveness of lipid-lowering therapies. Results from lower-quality studies may be less accurate because the most common criteria assessed as questionable or incorrect were perspective, measurement and analysis.