The PleurX peritoneal drainage catheter for drainage of malignant ascites in a community setting has been evaluated by the NICE Medical Technologies Evaluation Programme. This article outlines the evidence included in the Sponsor's submission, the independent critique by the External Assessment...

Background:Background: The high number of patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) has facilitated greater research, resulting in the development of innovative medical devices. So far, results from economic evaluations that compared drug-eluting stents (DES) and bare-metal stents (BMS)...

Background:Background: Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is considered an orphan disease. Prostacyclins are the keystone for PAH treatment. Choosing between the three available prostacyclin therapies could be complicated because there are no comparison studies, so the final decision must be...

Background:Background: In spite of the important progress made in the abortive treatment of acute migraine episodes since the introduction of triptans, reduction of pain and associated symptoms is in many cases still not as effective nor as fast as would be desirable. Recent research pays more...

Background:Background: When guidelines for health economic evaluations prescribe that a societal perspective should be adopted, productivity costs should be included. However, previous research suggests that, in practice, productivity costs are often neglected. This may considerably bias the...

In past decades, studies focusing on new chemotherapeutic agents for patients with inoperable non-small-cell lung cancer have reported only modest gains in survival. These health gains are achieved at considerable cost, but economic evidence is lacking on superiority of one agent in terms of...

Background: Research has consistently demonstrated a relationship between depression and increased levels of health service use over the short term. However, much less is known about how this relationship is influenced by the success, or otherwise, of depression management strategies, and the...

The design of decision-analytic models for cost-effectiveness analysis has been the subject of discussion. The current work addresses this issue by noting that, when time is to be explicitly modelled, we need to represent phenomena occurring in continuous time. Models evaluated in continuous...

Objectives:Objectives: This report reviews the cost effectiveness of different therapeutic interventions used in the treatment of ankylosing spondylitis (AS). Abstract: Methods:Methods: We performed a systematic search of the databases MEDLINE via PubMed, EMBASE and the Cochrane Library and used...

Background: In a previous article using population-level data, an a priori number-needed-to-decrease (NND) analysis was conducted to determine if there is potential opportunity in a given population for a disease management program to achieve financial effectiveness. Critics of that study have...