introduction: intraoperative radiation therapy device (iort) is one of the several options for partial breast irradiation. iort is sent to the tumor bed during surgery and can be replaced with conventional standard therapy (ebrt). the aim of this study was to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of iort machine compared with ebrt and to determine the dominant option in terms of the cost-effect...

OBJECTIVE To determine the clinical effectiveness of pneumococcal vaccine. DATA SOURCES Computerized searches of MEDLINE, EMBASE, and SCISEARCH databases were performed, reference lists of retrieved articles were reviewed, and first authors of published studies were contacted. STUDY SELECTION Studies of use of pneumococcal vaccines in adults were included if the study design was a randomize...

In decision making regarding optimal resource allocation to safeguard public health, policymakers and healthcare providers rely on the availability and reliability of data about the relative costs and benefits of competing treatment options. One such an approach is based on cost effectiveness analysis (CEA) which is intended to be used as a combined metric of both the costs and health outcomes ...

Many clinicians believe that allowing costs to influence clinical decisions is unethical. They are mistaken in this belief, because it cannot be ethical to ignore the adverse consequences upon others of the decisions you make, which is what 'costs' represent. There are, however, some important ethical issues in deciding what costs to count, and how to count them. But these dilemmas are equally ...

Anesthesiologists and certified registered nurse anesthetists provide high-quality, efficacious anesthesia care to the U.S. population. This research and analyses indicate that CRNAs are less costly to train than anesthesiologists and have the potential for providing anesthesia care efficiently. Anesthesiologists and CRNAs can perform the same set of anesthesia services, including relatively ra...

UNLABELLED We analyzed the results of conventional imaging and somatostatin receptor scintigraphy in 150 patients with neuroendocrine tumors. METHODS The outcomes of combinations of imaging modalities were compared in terms of tumor localization, effect on patient management and financial costs. RESULTS In patients with carcinoids, a combination of somatostatin receptor scintigraphy, chest ...

This paper resolves several controversies in CEA. Generalizing [Garber, A.M., Phelps, C.E., 1997. Economic foundations of cost-effectiveness analysis. Journal of Health Economics 16 (1), 1-31], the paper shows accounting for unrelated future costs distorts decision making. After replicating [Meltzer, D., 1997. Accounting for future costs in medical cost-effectiveness analysis. Journal of Health...

Cost-effectiveness analysis can be used to help set priorities for funding health care programs. For each intervention, the costs and clinical outcomes associated with that strategy must be compared with an alternate strategy for treating the same patients. If an intervention results in improved outcomes but also costs more, the incremental cost per incremental unit of clinical outcome should b...

OBJECTIVE To identify which smoking cessation interventions provide the most efficient use of health care resources at a population level. METHODS Effectiveness data were obtained from a review of the international literature. Costs and effects of smoking cessation interventions were estimated from the perspective of the Australian Government. Treatment costs and effects were modelled using i...