The financial cost of cardiovascular
disease is astronomical. In the U.S every year, 1.5
million americans have a heart attack, 300,000 of whom
die before receiving medical attention. Similarly, cardiovascular
disease is a major health problem in Europe, causing
50% or more of all deaths at considerable cost to health
services.
The cost of cardiovascular diseases and stroke in the
United States is estimated at nearly $300 billion every
year. This figure includes health expenditures (direct
costs) and lost productivity resulting from morbidity
and mortality (indirect costs). Coronary artery bypass
surgery is the most frequently prescribed surgical procedure
for heart disease, costing $10 billion per year. Nearly
20,000 people die every year as a result of bypass surgery
or angioplasty (ballooning of the occluded artery, average
cost $21,000).
In Europe, cardiovascular diseases now contribute 18.5%
of all the disability adjusted life years in the established
market economies of Europe, and demographic projections
over the next 20 years alone suggest a 40% increase
in the societal burden. This burden is much greater
with stroke than heart disease, since a greater proportion
of individuals survive a stroke and are usually prone
to being more physically and mentally handicapped thereafter
than those surviving with heart diseases. Currently,
a substantial proportion of the health budget of the
European Union is taken with dealing with cardiovascular
problems.
Additionally to the burden that such expenses represent
to state budgets, pharmaceuticals companies face the
high cost of failure in drug development and discovery
of new biomaterials. It is crucial that researchers
provide high-quality tools and low-expensive, high-throughput
methods to allow economical optimization of drug development
and biomaterial testing processes.
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