Background. The objective of this simulation model was to assess the cost-effectiveness of different biological treatment strategies based on levels of disease activity in Spain, in patients with moderate to severe active RA and an insufficient response to at least one anti-TNF agent. Methods. Clinically meaningful effectiveness criteria were defined using DAS28 scores: remission and Low Diseas...

BACKGROUND Hypertension is responsible for more deaths worldwide than any other cardiovascular risk factor. Guidelines based on blood pressure level for initiation of treatment of hypertension may be too costly compared with an approach based on absolute cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk, especially in developing countries. METHODS AND RESULTS Using a Markov CVD model, we compared 6 strategie...

BACKGROUND No evaluations of the cost or cost effectiveness of interventions to increase school implementation of food availability policies have been reported. Government and non-government agency decisions regarding the extent of investment required to enhance school implementation of such policies are unsupported by such evidence. This study sought to i) Determine cost and cost-effectiveness...

Streptococcus pneumoniae infections in adults are associated with substantial morbidity, mortality, and costs. A literature review was conducted to identify strengths and limitations of the cost-effectiveness of pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine studies. A comparative analysis of the impact of model parameters on cost-effectiveness ratios was complemented by systematic assessment of the studi...

Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is an important component of the economic evaluation of new treatment options. In many clinical and observational studies of costs, censored data pose challenges to the CEA. We consider a special situation where the terminating events for the survival time and costs are different. Traditional methods for statistical inference offer no means for dealing with cen...

BACKGROUND Industry involvement has been associated with more favourable cost-effectiveness ratios in cost-effectiveness analyses, but the mechanisms for this association are unclear. We evaluated whether the assumed accuracy of the Papanicolaou (Pap) test was correlated with the features of cost-effectiveness analysis studies. METHODS We searched PubMed (last updated April 2010) for cost-eff...

The current case management and drug policy of malaria in Nigeria recommended by the Federal ministry of health may not be appropriate for all age categories. This suspicion was tested by running a cost effectiveness analysis of two possible and alternative strategies: Artemisinin Combination Therapy (ACT) or Chloroquine and ACT only if CQ fails (CANACT), in adult non pregnant Nigerians aged 20...

BACKGROUND To compare the cost-effectiveness of treating early responders versus early nonresponders to an atypical antipsychotic (risperidone) and the cost-effectiveness of treating early nonresponders maintained on risperidone versus those switched to olanzapine. METHODS This post hoc analysis used data from a randomized, double-blind, 12-week schizophrenia study (Study Code: HGMN, n = 628)...

OBJECTIVE To investigate if published studies tend to report favourable cost effectiveness ratios (below 20,000 dollars, 50,000 dollars, and 100,000 dollars per quality adjusted life year (QALY) gained) and evaluate study characteristics associated with this phenomenon. DESIGN Systematic review. Studies reviewed 494 English language studies measuring health effects in QALYs published up to De...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of a Multidisciplinary Integrated Care (MIC) model compared to Usual Care (UC) in Dutch residential homes. METHODS The economic evaluation was conducted from a societal perspective alongside a 6 month, clustered, randomized controlled trial involving 10 Dutch residential homes. Outcome measures included a quality of ...