Impact of arterial hypertension on the costs of primary and secondary health care: the role of physical activity

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases continue to be responsible for a large portion of deaths all around the world. Among these diseases, arterial hypertension is the most prevalent, and is responsible for 9.4 million deaths annually. The pervasive nature of arterial hypertension is associated with increased costs to public health due to its need for continuous treatment. However, written studies have shown the connection between physical activity and the reduction of healthcare costs among patients suffering from hypertension. Still, there are few studies on this subject in national literature. Thus, the proposed present objective will be to estimate the impact of arterial hypertension on the costs of primary and secondary health care services for the Unified Health System SUS , and clearly identify the role of physical activity in relationship those costs. To do so, the following will be researched: i) Costs of health services (primary and secondary care), ii) diagnosis of hypertension, iii) level of habitual physical activity. The results will be adjusted according to demographic characteristics of those participating in the study. The characteristics include socioeconomic status, sex and age, the presence of other chronic diseases and obesity. The statistical analysis will be elaborated using structural equation models where the healthcare costs will be treated as the dependent variable and blood pressure will be treated as the independent variable. The physical activity variable will be treated as the mediation variable. The magnitude of this relationship will be expressed in standardized values (correlation [r]). The software used will be Stata version 13.0 and the level of significance (p-value) will be set at values lower than 5%.