Prevention is life- and cost-saving

Five-hundred life-saving interventions and their cost-effectiveness.

We gathered information on the cost-effectiveness of life-saving interventions in the United States from publicly available economic analyses. "Life-saving interventions" were defined as any behavioral and/or technological strategy that reduces the probability of premature death among a specified target population. We defined cost-effectiveness as the net resource costs of an intervention per y...

Congenital toxoplasmosis in Austria: Prenatal screening for prevention is cost-saving

BACKGROUND Primary infection of Toxoplasma gondii during pregnancy can be transmitted to the unborn child and may have serious consequences, including retinochoroiditis, hydrocephaly, cerebral calcifications, encephalitis, splenomegaly, hearing loss, blindness, and death. Austria, a country with moderate seroprevalence, instituted mandatory prenatal screening for toxoplasma infection to minimiz...

Life-saving and life-taking: a comment.

Treating hepatitis C in the prison population is cost-saving.

UNLABELLED The prevalence of chronic hepatitis C infection in U.S. prisons is 12% to 31%. Treatment of this substantial portion of the population has been subject to much controversy, both medically and legally. Studies have demonstrated that treatment of chronic hepatitis C with pegylated interferon (PEG IFN) and ribavirin is a cost-effective measure in the general population; however, no stud...

Delayed sternal closure is a life saving decision.

Nineteen hundred and fifty open heart operations were performed between January 1995 and December 2000 at the cardiac surgery department of Chest Disease Hospital in Kuwait. Sternal closure was delayed in 40 patients (2%), because of hemodynamic instability limiting primary closure in 23 patients and uncontrollable bleeding in 17 patients. Four patients died in the immediate postoperative perio...