Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the cost effectiveness of using epoetin-alpha (erythropoietin) to augment preoperative autologous donation (PAD) of blood prior to elective cardiac surgery. Design and setting: We designed a decision-analytic model incorporating the risk of...

Cost estimates from developed countries indicate that asthma accounts for up to 2% of the economic cost of all diseases. A large proportion of asthma-related costs are attributable to poor asthma control. Treatment strategies which improve clinical outcomes in patients with asthma, therefore,...

Objective: To assess the cost effectiveness of aspirin 25mg plus dipyridamole 200mg twice daily in the secondary prevention of ischaemic stroke, according to the French social security perspective, using efficacy data from the second European Stroke Prevention Study (ESPS-2). The ESPS-2 was a...

Objective: To investigate the impact of epilepsy in Italy on healthcare resources, producing an average cost per patient per year of follow-up. Design and setting: The Episcreen Project is a multicentre longitudinal Italian observational study; its methodology, organisational network and case...

Objective: To assess the effectiveness of the pharmacotherapeutic circle (PTC), a general practitioner (GP) prescribing-improvement programme to enhance prescribing quality and reduce drug costs. Design: Combined pre- and post-intervention time-series design using an internal comparison of...

Lifestyle drugs are used to alleviate or enhance: 1. lifestyle problems or conditions, regardless of the cause; and 2. health problems for which the underlying cause is in the realm of personal responsibility. It is the particular use of a drug, rather than its inherent properties, that...

Objective: To explore the relationship between asthma control level and health-related QOL (HR-QOL), and to understand the role of various psychometric and utility-based methods in studying this relationship. Methods: Two hundred and twenty-eight consecutive adult outpatients and inpatients at...

Objective: To investigate the relationship between cognitive impairment, measured with the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), and the cost of care. Design: The study uses data from the Kungsholmen project, a population-based study in Sweden in which people 75 years and older were observed...

Objective: To compare gastrointestinal (GI) healthcare resource use (HCRU) and associated costs in patients taking a fixed combination of diclofenac and misoprostol versus other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Methods: We analysed a sample (49 033 patients) of the Government of...

Healthcare reform has placed increasing pressure on anaesthetists to consider the costs of current anaesthesia strategies. Although the cost of anaesthesia constitutes only a small proportion of total healthcare costs, anaesthetic drug expenditures have been a focus of cost-containment efforts....