The Dyspepsia Project is a General Practitioners’ (GPs) project, aiming to establish an epidemiological database in order to describe and follow up dyspeptic patients in the Ravenna area. OBJECTIVE: to investigate the feasibility of a cost of illness study on the dyspeptic patient in terms of healthcare resource use, and to produce an average cost per patient. METHOD: retrospective cost of illness analysis based on records of 106 dyspeptic patients followed by 10 GPs. This preliminary analysis has been performed in the perspective of Health System. Patients analyzed were enrolled between September and December 1999 and followed up at least for 6 months. Hospital admissions; GP, specialist and emergency room visits; instrumental and laboratory tests; drugs were analyzed; each cost variable was valued in Italian Liras 1999 (1800 ITL = 1US$) using published regional or national tariffs and marked prices for drugs. Patients have been divided into Group A (37 = 35%) and Group B (69 = 65%), according to whether they underwent or not gastroscopy test. RESULTS: the average cost per patient was ITL 1,121,654 in A Group and ITL 624,565 in B Group. Direct costs accounted for 76.5% of the total value in A Group and for 70.9% in B Group, while the remaining 23.5% in A Group and 29.1% in B Group was due to indirect costs (i.e. productivity losses). In Group A the major cost driver was drugs (40.8%) (13.6% was the share of antidyspeptic drugs) followed by tests (18.4%), visits (15.6%) and emergency room visits (1.7%); in B Group the major cost driver was drugs (38.6%) (10.1% was the share of antidyspeptic drugs) followed by visits (19.5%), tests (9.2%) and emergency room visits (3.6%). CONCLUSIONS: collection of cost data at General Practitioner’s level is very effective as it allows a precise and appropriate analysis.