The enormous financial impact of stroke disability

The societal cost of ischemic stroke is known to be high, an estimated nearly $50 billion (US dollars [USD]) per year in the United States.1 This sum includes the hospitalization for acute care and initial rehabilitation, as well as subsequent clinic appointments, prescriptions, long-term care, and loss of income from inability to work. When policy makers determine acceptability of new stroke therapies, they consider these costs and whether a new therapy offers enough clinical benefit to justify them. However, until now, no one has calculated such long-term costs by levels of disability after stroke, leaving a critical gap in our ability to analyze and compare new therapies. If treatments reduce disability, this may have a substantial impact on the health care system that can then be evaluated next to the cost of widespread use of the intervention.