BACKGROUND High-risk (HR) human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is an established cause of malignant disease. We used a societal perspective to estimate the cost of HR HPV-related cervical, vulvar, vaginal, anal, and penile precancer and cancer, and oropharyngeal cancer in Sweden in 2006, 1 year before HPV vaccination became available in the country. MATERIALS AND METHODS This prevalence-based...

We present an integer programming formulation of the min-sum arborescence with node outage costs problem. The solution to the problem consists of selecting links to connect a set of terminal nodes to a root node with minimal expected annual cost, where the annual cost is the sum of annual links costs and annual outage costs. The links in the network are prone to failure and each terminal node h...

Seasonal influenza epidemics have a substantial public health and economic burden in the United States (US). On average, over 200,000 people are hospitalized and an estimated 23,000 people die from respiratory and circulatory complications associated with seasonal influenza virus infections each year. Annual direct medical costs and indirect productivity costs across the US have been found to a...

A novel paging scheme under delay bounds is proposed for personal communication systems. This paging scheme is independent of the location probability distributions of the mobile users and satisfies the delay bounds, while minimizing the amount of bandwidth used for locating a mobile user. The proposed paging scheme includes the optimal partition algorithm and paging procedure with respect to p...

This paper presents an approach to the problem of on-line stereo self-calibration. After a short introduction of the general method, we propose a new one, based on the minimization of matching costs. We furthermore show that the number of matched pixels can be used as a quality measure. A Metropolis algorithm based Monte-Carlo scheme is employed to reliably minimize the costs. We present experi...

Combinatorial network optimization theory concerns minimization of connection costs among interconnected components in systems such as electronic circuits. As an organization principle, similar wiring minimization can be observed at various levels of nervous systems, invertebrate and vertebrate, including primate, from placement of the entire brain in the body down to the subcellular level of n...

OBJECTIVES To estimate annual direct costs in four distinct disease duration groups (0 to < or =2, 2 to < or =6, 6 to < or =10, and >10 years) of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), to determine predictors of high costs and to describe characteristics of patients with high and with low costs. METHODS A questionnaire assessing RA related care and resource utilisation rates and costs was c...

OBJECTIVE To determine the annual direct, indirect and total costs and predictors of costs in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). METHODS One hundred and five patients with SLE completed questionnaires on health-care utilization and employment history. Predictors of costs were determined by multiple regression analyses using direct, indirect and total costs as outcome variables....

OBJECTIVES To compare healthcare costs and mortality rates of Dutch patients with a conventional (CON) general practitioner (GP) and patients with a GP who has additionally completed training in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). DESIGN Comparative economic evaluation. SETTING Database from the Dutch insurance company Agis. PARTICIPANTS 1,521,773 patients (98.8%) from a CON pra...