BACKGROUND Work-related carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is a complex and costly condition. There is some evidence that the employment outcome may be worse in cases of CTS where the condition is being considered for compensation. AIM To examine whether workers' compensation status is an important determinant of outcome of CTS. METHODS Cases, with a Workers' Compensation Board (WCB) claim, and r...

In order to simplify computational methods based on dynamic programming, a relaxed procedure based on upper and lower bounds of the optimal cost was recently introduced. The convergence properties of this procedure are analyzed in this paper. In particular, it is shown that the computational effort in finding an approximately optimal control law by relaxed value iteration is related to the poly...

BACKGROUND Multiple sclerosis (MS) is chronic and debilitating, afflicts patients in the prime of their lives, and requires costly, decades-long disease management. MS prevalence is increasing, and treatment with new drug therapies is expensive. OBJECTIVES The objectives of this analysis were to (1) determine the average total and component direct medical costs incurred in the treatment of MS...

a study was undertaken in southern peninsular state of india, the tamil nadu state, to assess the farmers’ “willingness to pay” (wtp) for receiving annual health care services to their dairy animals. the districts of the state were categorized as “livestock developed” (ld) and “livestock under developed” (lud) based on initial base line developed. contingent valuation (cv) approach was used to ...