Cost-effectiveness of prevention of coronary disease in Germany

It is generally accepted that the incidence of coronary heart disease can effectively be reduced by strengthening prevention. At the same time, it is still unclear how large the effects of life-style oriented preventive measurements such as diet and exercising are in everyday life. Furthermore, there is an ongoing debate on what measurements are effective. Thus, against the background of dwindling financial resources in health care the input of health economic evaluation is explicated. General issues of health economic evaluation are presented. After that, an overview on the current findings of cost-effectiveness in primary prevention of coronary heart disease is given. Risk factors are separately discussed. It is demonstrated that preventive measurements dealing especially with hypertension and hypercholesterolemia can be cost-effective.