Evaluation of Near Patient Cholesterol Testing Using the Cholestech LDX

Enquiries about the content of the report should be directed to the above address. The Medical Services Advisory Committee is an independent committee which has been established to provide advice to the Commonwealth Minister for Health and Ageing (formerly the Commonwealth Minister for Health and Aged Care) on the strength of evidence available on new and existing medical technologies and procedures in terms of their safety, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. This advice will help to inform Government decisions about which medical services should attract funding under Medicare. MSAC recommendations do not necessarily reflect the views of all individuals who participated in the MSAC evaluation. v Table 14 Variables and assumptions used by the modelled evaluation to determine patients with normal lipid levels.. FIGURES Figure 1 Incidence of major CHD events in quintiles of baseline cholesterol from three prospective non-intervened cohorts (from Gunnar and Olov, 1997) .. Figure 7 Change in the incremental cost-effectiveness of NPT with the proportion of new tests being performed in patients with normal cholesterol .. Figure 8 Change in the incremental cost-effectiveness of NPT with changes in the number of follow-up GP consultations associated with laboratory testing .. Executive summary The procedure The Cholestech LDX ® is a small, portable analyser and test cassette system that uses reflectance photometry (the amount of light reflected from a solid surface) to measure the quantity of substances in blood. The Cholestech LDX can measure the level of total cholesterol (TC), high-density lipoprotein associated cholesterol (HDL) and triglycerides (TG) in whole blood (capillary or venous), serum or plasma. The device can also calculate the TC/HDL ratio and derives estimates of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) associated cholesterol. Medical Services Advisory Committee (MSAC) is a key element of a measure taken by the Commonwealth to strengthen the role of evidence in health financing decisions in Australia. MSAC advises the Minister for Health and Ageing (formerly the Minister for Health and Aged Care) on the evidence relating to the safety, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of new and existing medical technologies and procedures, and under what circumstances public funding should be supported. A rigorous assessment of the available evidence is thus the basis of decision-making when funding is sought under Medicare. For the Cholestech LDX, a search of the medical literature available on the device was undertaken and the evidence assessed and classified according to the NHMRC hierarchy of evidence. A modelled …