Costs of Medical Care for Acute Myocardial Infarction Attributable to Tobacco Consumption

BackgroundTobacco consumption is the principal modifiable risk factor causally associated with acute myocardial infarction (AMI). AMI has been an increasing and important cause of death in Mexico since 1980.MethodsTo estimate the direct health care costs of AMI, we carried out a cost of illness (COI) analysis, using data derived from an expert panel consensus and from medical chart review. We used the smoking attributable fraction (SAF) estimates to derive costs of tobacco consumption. We also estimated the benefits of a “Smoke-free Workplace” tobacco control policy in terms of avoidable deaths and health care costs savings.ResultsWe estimated an annual average costs of USD$6,420 and USD$9,216 for non-ST segment elevation AMI (NSTEMI) and ST segment elevation AMI (STEMI), respectively. The total annual health care costs estimated for incident AMI for the IMSS state-level division of Morelos reached USD$2.9 million, of which USD$1.6 million was directly attributed to tobacco consumption.ConclusionsOur results confirm the high costs associated with smoking and show the potential benefits resulting from a tobacco control policy. Our estimates are only applicable to social security in the state-level division of Morelos and more likely represent a lower boundary of the total costs of cardiovascular diseases attributed to tobacco, because we based the costs estimation on incident cases, and we did not take into consideration the costs derived from prevalent cases, indirect costs or other intangibles.