Prevalence of Treated Hypothyroidism in the Community - analysis from General Practices in North-East England with implications for the UK

[Clutter]

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

Hypothyroidism is more frequently diagnosed in women and older individuals. It has been suggested that the prevalence of hypothyroidism and the number of prescriptions for thyroid hormones are increasing. However, despite hypothyroidism being a common medical condition, contemporary data on prevalence, particularly across the various age groups, is limited.

Design, Results & Conclusions in:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/287...

[shaws Administrator]

Thanks for posting Clutter. I just hope they are given optimum hormone replacements.

[startagaingirl]

Thank you for posting this.

I had heard figures somewhere that it was 1 in 70 women and 1 in 1000 men or 1.5% of population, that study shows 3.6% across UK or more than double. And that is just those who are treated - we know from here that many, many people can't get treatment, so what would the real numbers be? That is an awful lot of people and yet doctors still aren't taught about it. The study says that economic impact of treatment with an ageing population needs to be considered, but how about the cost of all those anti-depressants, HRT, blood pressure tablets, statins, etc that are required due to non or under treatment? Never mind the cost of all those extra GP and endo visits that are only required because people are not properly treated?

It should be food for thought for the medical community.

Gillian

[diogenes Remembering]

Useful information. Assuming 10% at minimum of subjects would benefit from T3, then 150000 subjects would be in this category below 80 years of age and another 80000 above. However its more difficult giving T3 to older people, so we can say that at least 150000 pattients would benefit. Now I know that the NHS spends £32 million a year on T3, at about £9 a tablet. That comes out at round about 3.5 million tablets. A patient will need 365 of these in a year so that works out at 3500000/365 or 10000 patients getting T3 when 150000 at least ought to. It shows the gross under treatment of this condition. If the benefitting percentage is as high as 15% the situation is even worse.

[N1mble]

Extrapolating your figures, the saving to the NHS of purchasing T3 at the open market price of 10p/tablet rather than their £9/tablet would be almost £30 million. Enough of a saving to satisfy your projected real need, with cash left over. Who says the NHS doesn't need a major overhaul?