In screening for secondary prevention of breast cancer, clinical breast examination (CBE) combined with mammography may improve overall screening sensitivity compared with mammography alone. A systematic evaluation of the relative expenses and projected benefit of combining these two screening modalities is not presently available. We addressed this issue using a microsimulation model incorpora...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the total annual direct cost of patients with spondyloarthritis (SpA) in Greece. METHODS Retrospective study with 156 patients diagnosed and followed up in the rheumatology clinic of the University Hospital of Ioannina. Sixty-four had ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and 92 had psoriatic arthritis (PsA). Health resource use for each patient was elicited through a retrospec...

Objective: To estimate the wound treatment cost borne by the Buruli Ulcer Treatment Centre of the Amasaman Government Hospital, Ghana. Methods: Three different types of data collection approaches were used, namely, 1) observation checklist, 2) in-depth interviews, and 3) expenditure data review. Wound dressing processes were observed. Retrospective health facility cost data of Buruli ulcer (BU)...

BACKGROUND Drugs are most typically defined as specialty because they are expensive; however, other criteria used to define a drug as specialty include biologic drugs, the need to inject or infuse the drug, the requirement for special handling, or drug availability only via a limited distribution network. Specialty drugs play an increasingly important role in the treatment of chronic conditions...

The objectives of this study were to estimate the direct cost of infertility management, including diagnosis and treatment, in Canada during 1995, and the relative cost per live birth by treatment category. The analysis was based on the following estimates: the prevalence of infertility in Canada in 1995; the volume and distribution of infertility services; and the effectiveness and cost of spe...

One of the basic obstacles in the deployment of clean technologies such as wind turbines or PV modules is their intermittent nature due to dependency on the wind speed and solar radiance. In fact, the authors in this paper aim to investigate the effect of clean technologies such as wind turbines and PV modules on the total and individual costs of the distribution system. In order to model the u...

The necessity of air-conditioning causes the enormous energy use of underground train stations. Exergy and thermoeconomic analysis is applied to the annual operation of the air-conditioning system of a large underground train station in Taiwan. The current installation and the monitored data are taken to be the base case, which is then compared to three different optimized designs. The total re...

Probabilistic model; Inventory; Varying order cost; Holding cost; Lead-time demand; Uniform distribution; Safety stock Abstract This paper discusses the probabilistic backorders inventory system when the order cost unit is a function of the order quantity. Our objective is to minimize the expected annual total cost under a restriction on the expected annual holding cost when the lead time deman...

OBJECTIVE To estimate costs and outcomes of conventional annual Papanicolaou (Pap) test screening compared with biennial Pap test plus speculoscopy (PPS) screening for cervical neoplasms. DESIGN A Markov model compared cost-effectiveness and outcomes of annual Pap tests with biennial PPS. The model includes direct costs of screening, diagnostic testing, and treatment for squamous intraepithei...