BACKGROUND To improve care for children in district hospitals in Kenya, a multifaceted approach employing guidelines, training, supervision, feedback, and facilitation was developed, for brevity called the Emergency Triage and Treatment Plus (ETAT+) strategy. We assessed the cost effectiveness of the ETAT+ strategy, in Kenyan hospitals. Further, we estimate the costs of scaling up the intervent...

OBJECTIVES In Sweden, breast cancer (BC) represents 30% of newly diagnosed cancers and is the most common cancer in women. For hormone-dependent BC, endocrine therapies varying in efficacy and price are available. The aim of this study is to assess the cost effectiveness of fulvestrant 500 mg as a second-line hormonal therapy for postmenopausal women with estrogen receptor-positive metastatic o...

OBJECTIVE To assess cost and cost-effectiveness of immunization reminder/recall systems in the private sector. METHODS A manual postcard system (mail) was compared with a computer-based telephone system (autodialer) and control. Costs included time costs and the cost of equipment and supplies. The cost per child and the incremental cost of the intervention relative to control were computed. C...

AIM To undertake full economic evaluation of stapled hemorrhoidopexy (PPH) to establish its cost-effectiveness and investigate whether PPH can become cost-saving compared to conventional excisional hemorrhoidectomy (CH). METHODS A cost-utility analysis in hospital and health care system (UK) was undertaken using a probabilistic, cohort-based decision tree to compare the use of PPH with CH. Se...

BACKGROUND Therapeutic hypothermia can improve survival and neurological outcomes in cardiac arrest survivors, but its cost-effectiveness is uncertain. We sought to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of treating comatose cardiac arrest survivors with therapeutic hypothermia. METHODS AND RESULTS A decision model was developed to capture costs and outcomes for patients with witnessed out-of-hospit...

BACKGROUND Exercise referral schemes (ERS) aim to identify inactive adults in the primary care setting. The primary care professional refers the patient to a third party service, with this service taking responsibility for prescribing and monitoring an exercise programme tailored to the needs of the patient. This paper examines the cost-effectiveness of ERS in promoting physical activity compar...

The performance of incremental evolution is compared to that of direct evolution. A multi-variable symbolic regression problem is used. Incremental evolution is not found to outperform direct evolution when the full computational cost is considered.