Background: As in several other industrialized countries, Germany's statutory health insurance (SHI) is facing rising healthcare costs as well as the challenges caused by a double-aging society. The early detection and prevention of chronic diseases is considered a possible way to reduce the...

Background: Screening of populations at risk for colorectal cancer (CRC) allows the detection and successful treatment of tumours and their precursor polyps. The current UK CRC screening programme is faecal occult blood testing (FOBT), despite evidence from modelling studies to suggest that more...

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) invited the manufacturer of alitretinoin (Basilea Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Basel, Switzerland) to submit evidence for the clinical and cost effectiveness of this drug for the treatment of patients with severe chronic hand eczema (CHE),...

Background: Recommendations in the UK suggest restricting treatment of Alzheimer's disease with cholinesterase inhibitors, on cost-effectiveness grounds, to patients with moderate cognitive decline. As the economic analyses that informed these recommendations have been the subject of debate, we...

Cost-effectiveness analysis, which ranks projects by quality adjusted life years gained per dollar spent, is widely used in the evaluation of health interventions. We show that cost effectiveness analysis can be derived from two axioms: society prefers Pareto improvements and society values...

Background: Research sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry is often assumed to be more likely to report favourable cost-effectiveness results. Objective: To determine whether there was a relationship between the source of funding and the reporting of positive results. Methods: We conducted a...

Background: Actinic keratosis (AK) is caused by chronic exposure to UV radiation (sunlight). First-line treatments are cryosurgery, topical 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and topical diclofenac. Where these are contraindicated or less appropriate, alternatives are imiquimod and photodynamic therapy...