OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the effect of early treatment on lifetime costs of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) from the perspective of the patient, health insurer and society.

METHODS: We build a decision analytic model estimated by the Monte Carlo simulation to compare two scenarios of AD treatment. The care as usual (CAU) scenario is based on an estimate that Czech AD patients currently face only a 25% chance of being treated and that the eventual treatment is initiated only late after the disease is acquired. The intervention scenario models a hypothetical situation when every patient starts receiving treatment shortly after the disease onset. Under both scenarios, individual lifetime costs are estimated for a set of patient profiles differing in sex and the age at which the disease develops. These costs are then compared per profile to evaluate the economic impact of early treatment. Model parameters are based on national registers (probability of treatment and hospitalization), life tables (probability of death), published research on domestic costs of care, and foreign schemes of cognitive decline.

RESULTS: Early treatment decreases societal costs by thousands of euros per patient’s lifetime. The savings are higher for earlier disease onsets and for women, who enjoy a longer life expectancy. For instance, the costs of a woman developing the disease at 70 decrease from €277 thousand (health care 2.9; informal care 274) under the CAU to €259 thousand (7.3; 252) under the intervention scenario. The savings diminish with the onset age but remain positive also for onsets after the 90th birthday.

CONCLUSIONS: Early treatment has the potential to decrease the societal burden of AD in Czechia by prolonging the time in which patients live more independently with milder cognitive impairment. While slightly increasing spending from public health budgets, it would result in considerable savings to patients.