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Asymptomatic Hyperuricemia
- AMY K. TAYLOR, PH.D.; and
- SIMEON I. TAYLOR, M.D., PH.D.
- Center for the Analysis of Health ; Boston, MA 02114
- Massachusetts General Hospital; Boston, MA 02114
Excerpt
To the editor: This letter is a comment on the economic analysis of the therapy of hyperuricemia as outlined by Liang and Fries (Ann Intern Med 88:666-670, 1978). They assume that the cost of therapy with allopurinol is $110 per year. From that they estimate a lifetime cost of $20 000 based on an interest rate of 7%. However, this calculation is misleading because it does not take time and the interest rate into account properly.
A more useful approach is to calculate the present value (see Reference 1) of the total cost of a lifetime of allopurinol therapy. In
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