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Heart disease straining U.K. economy

LONDON, May 15 (UPI) -- Heart disease is becoming a costly drag on the British economy, at a price tag of $55 billion a year, a report said this week.

The figure represents the cost of cardiovascular disease in terms of both healthcare expenditure and lost productivity, said a new study published ahead of print in Heart.

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In fact, the United Kingdom spends more of its healthcare budget on cardiovascular disease than any other country in the European Union, the researchers at the Health Economics Research Centre at the University of Oxford noted.

"Despite the falling rates of illness and death from cardiovascular disease," the researchers said, "cost savings are likely to be cancelled out by the rising costs of treatment, the ageing of the population, and the threat to heart health posed by obesity and diabetes."

The authors said the largest component of those yearly expenditures was direct healthcare costs, at 60 percent of the total, while lost productivity accounted for 23 percent and informal care represented 17 percent.

The researchers used data on all U.K. residents with diagnosed cardiovascular disease in 2004 and associated costs, including community health and social services, emergency care, hospital stays, informal care and the impact on productivity from illness and premature death.

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Cardiovascular disease cost the National Health Service almost $30 billion in 2004, representing 21 percent of all healthcare expenditure. Private healthcare costs added nearly $2.8 billion, representing 18 percent of overall U.K. healthcare costs.

Hospital inpatient care was the most expensive component at almost $19 billion or nearly two-thirds of the National Health Service bill for cardiovascular disease, while drug costs accounted for almost $5.7 billion.

In 2004 more than 69 million work days were lost to the disease, costing the country's economy nearly $5.7 billion.

"When all these factors were added up, the total costs to the UK economy of cardiovascular disease in 2004 came to ($55 billion)," they said.

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