OBJECTIVE: To conduct an economic analysis of the PURSUIT trial in the UK for patients with unstable angina or non-Q-wave myocardial infarction (MI) admitted to hospital and randomized to eptifibatide (GPIIb/IIIa) or placebo in addition to usual therapy. METHODS: Health-care resource consumption was collected prospectively for all patients in the PURSUIT trial. Unit costs were developed for the UK and applied to the resources consumed in the trial to estimate the cost per patient treated during index hospital stay and at six months follow-up. Analyses were conducted using resource consumption from the UK sub population, Western European (WE) sub population, and the total PURSUIT trial population. Long term outcome measures were based on life expectancy estimated from six-month PURSUIT data of the WE sub-population and the North American (NA) + WE sub populations. RESULTS: Initial hospital and six month costs for eptifibatide patients including drug cost were slightly higher than the placebo group using the WE and overall trial population resources. UK-specific resource consumption was lower in the eptifibatide group. The difference in 30-day rate of death and MI was 1% (NS) for WE and 1.5% (p = 0.04) for the overall trial. At six months, MI rates were further decreased for eptifibatide but no difference existed in mortality between the groups. The CE ratios (discounted at 3%) using WE or overall resources are £8,436 and £12,591 respectively using WE survival or £3,418 and £5,036 using WE + NA survival. Using UK resources, eptifibatide is cost saving in either survival scenario. CONCLUSION: The cost-effectiveness ratios for eptifibatide in the UK all fall within an acceptable range for adopting new technology. The impact of resource consumption data on the cost effectiveness ratio underscores the importance of the source of treatment-pattern data and the need for prospective or retrospective data collection to reflect country-management styles.