Background: Asthma is one of the most common chronic diseases all over the world, which impacts socioeconomics of families and health care systems. We aimed to investigate the economic burden of pediatric asthmain Iran and to examine its variability depending on asthma severity. Methods: In a descriptive-analytical study 141 pediatric asthmatic patients, who referred to pediatric referral cent...

background: major thalassemia is an autosomal recessive disease with complications, mortality and serious pathology. today, the life expectancy of patients with major thalassemia has increased along with therapeutic advances. therefore, they need lifelong care, and caring for them would incur many costs. being aware of the patients’ costs can be effective for controlling and managing the costs ...

OBJECTIVE To assess and compare health care costs for normal-weight, overweight and obese Australians. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS Analysis of 5-year follow-up data from the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle study, collected in 2004-2005. Data were available for 6140 participants aged >or= 25 years at baseline. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Direct health care cost, direct non-health c...

The practice expense component of the Medicare fee schedule (MFS), which is currently based on historical charges and rewards physician procedures at the expense of cognitive services, is due to be changed by January 1, 1998. The Physician Payment Review Commission (PPRC) and others have proposed microcosting direct costs and allocating all indirect costs on a common basis, such as physician ti...

See related article, pages 319–324. Lundstrom et al show a marked increase in cost of caring for patients with stroke with spasticity compared with the cost of caring for patients with stroke without spasticity.1 This is an important contribution to our understanding of stroke and its costs. If a reader attempts to generalize Lundström et al’s findings to other countries, we see 2 important lim...

BACKGROUND Heart failure (HF) imposes both direct costs to healthcare systems and indirect costs to society through morbidity, unpaid care costs, premature mortality and lost productivity. The global economic burden of HF is not known. METHODS We estimated the overall cost of heart failure in 2012, in both direct and indirect terms, across the globe. Existing country-specific heart failure co...

OBJECTIVE To analyse the association of direct and indirect costs in patients with medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) with somatic symptom severity (SSS). METHODS A cross-sectional cost analysis for retrospective 6 months was conducted in 294 primary care patients with MUS. Health care utilisation and loss of productivity were measured by questionnaires. SSS was measured using the "Patient ...

BACKGROUND The cost-utility of brief therapy compared with cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) and care as usual in the treatment of depression and anxiety has not yet been determined. AIMS To assess the cost-utility of brief therapy compared with CBT and care as usual. METHOD A pragmatic randomised controlled trial involving 702 patients was conducted at 7 Dutch mental healthcare centres (...

OBJECTIVES This study was conducted to estimate the socioeconomic cost of injuries in South Korea. METHODS We matched claims data from national health insurance, automobile insurance and industrial accident compensation insurance (IACI), and mortality data obtained from the national statistical office from 2001 to 2003 by patients' unique identifier. Socioeconomic cost included both direct co...

BACKGROUND Tuberculosis (TB) is known to disproportionately affect the most economically disadvantaged strata of society. Many studies have assessed the association between poverty and TB, but only a few have assessed the direct financial burden TB treatment and care can place on households. Patient costs can be particularly burdensome for TB-affected households in sub-Saharan Africa where pove...