International journal of technology assessment in health care
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To calculate the costs of blood collection, testing, storage, and transfusion in Greece. ⋯ Blood has a significant cost to the health system. Policy makers and practitioners should encourage its rational use, build on current policies to further improve collection and distribution, encourage further volunteer donorship in Greece, and also consider alternatives to blood where the possibility exists.
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Int J Technol Assess Health Care · Jan 2006
ReviewEvaluation of the cost-effectiveness of drotrecogin alfa (activated) for the treatment of severe sepsis in the United Kingdom.
The aim of this study was to assess the cost-effectiveness of drotrecogin alfa (activated) compared with best supportive care in a UK cohort of adult intensive-care patients with severe sepsis. ⋯ Whereas the therapeutic cost for drotrecogin alfa (activated) appears high (at around pounds 5000 per patient) and the potential impact on the provider budget is considerable, drotrecogin alfa (activated) is clinically effective, represents a cost-effective use of resources, and is a significant advance in the treatment of severe sepsis in patients requiring intensive care.
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The aim of this study was to demonstrate the best way of identifying all relevant published health economic evaluation studies, which have increased in number rapidly in the past few decades. Nevertheless, health technology assessment projects are often faced with a scarcity of relevant studies. ⋯ A search in NHS EED, by means of the Cochrane Library or the Center for Reviews and Dissimination, along with a supplementary search in PubMed, is generally an appropriate, cost-effective strategy. However, because "cost-effectiveness" is not consistently indexed with Medical Subject Heading terms in PubMed, all economic search terms need to be used to fully identify the relevant references.
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Int J Technol Assess Health Care · Jan 2006
Cost of home and hospital care for patients with cystic fibrosis followed up in two reference medical centers in France.
In France, new guidelines for clinical practices concerning cystic fibrosis came out in 2002, underscoring the need for early and intensive management of this disease. Because no recent health economic studies on cystic fibrosis in France were available, we conducted a cost-analysis study before the new guidelines were put into practice, with a view to a later study on the medical and economic impact of these guidelines. ⋯ The results show that outpatient costs were higher than inpatient costs, which could be related to the importance granted to home health care in France, notably for intravenous antibiotic treatments given for pulmonary complications.
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Int J Technol Assess Health Care · Jan 2006
Meta AnalysisReanalysis of systematic reviews: the case of invasive strategies for acute coronary syndromes.
The objective of this study was to collect all systematic reviews on invasive strategies for acute coronary syndromes (ACS) and reanalyze the data in these reviews to reach combined estimates, as well as to make predictions on the effectiveness and risk of harm so as to facilitate relevant decision making in health care. ⋯ There seems to be at present no solid evidence for survival benefit on early invasive strategy for UA/NSTEMI as a broad diagnostic group, and the risk of doing harm should be considered. Also, the evidence for PCI to decrease early mortality after STEMI is scanty. Estimations of predicted harm may further aid decisions on whether to implement the new treatment over the old one. It may also give an additional dimension for interpreting the results of any meta-analysis.