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Abstract
Objective. The main aim of the research was to investigate the costs of dementia in Romania based on the estimated average cost of each person with dementia in Bucharest.
Method. This was a cross-sectional, non-population based study, with a mix of "bottom-up" and "top-down" data collection methods, which adopted the Cost-of-Illness approach from a broad societal perspective. The study involved 31 carers of patients with dementia in two Bucharest clinics in 2013 and 2014: the PROMEMORIA Private Clinic and the "Sf. Luca" chronic disease hospital. Face-to-face individual interviews were conducted using a modified version of the Resource Utilisation in Dementia (RUD) questionnaire. The average direct and indirect costs of dementia per person in the study were estimated for the year 2013 and are presented for the three levels of disease severity - mild, moderate and severe.
Results. The mean carer age was 59.3 (SD = 13.3), with 77.4% of the participants being females. The average cost (direct and indirect) of dementia per person in the study ranged from 53,787 RON to 67,554 RON (depending on the hourly wage used for valuation of the caregivers' time). Converted to the international dollar (I$) currency, using the purchasing power parity (PPP) of the US dollar in Romania in 2013, the average annual cost of dementia in the study accounted for between I$32,301 and I$40,583. The estimated total annual cost of dementia in Romania in 2013 was between I$9 bln and I$11 bln.
Key words: dementia, Alzheimer's disease, caregivers, Romania, cost of illness, direct costs, indirect costs
Slowa kluczowe: demencia, choroba Alzheimera, opiekunowie, Rumunia, koszt choroby, koszty bezposrednie, koszty posrednie
* Introduction
1.Background to Dementia
1.1. Dementia - definition and diagnosis
Dementia has been described as an "umbrella term" [1], which encompasses as many as 100 different diagnoses which, in certain key aspects, are more or less similar [2]. Usually, dementia presents itself as disturbance in specific and general brain functions may include memory, reasoning, orientation, comprehension, calculation, learning capacity, language and judgement [3], over a sustained period of time and is characterised by a progressive decline. Many researchers today agree that dementia is best described as a "syndrome" [1, 3-6]. Bayles and Tomoeda [7] explained that this term is used to denote a wide-ranging list of...