Background:Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common sustained disorder of cardiac rhythm. Various new anticoagulation and antiarrythmic treatments are being investigated for the treatment of AF. Before novel treatments can be used widely in actual clinical practice, the cost...

Background:Background: Studies have determined the societal impact of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) by modelling its impact on labour supply and productivity. In addition, most of the studies on the topic conclude that the problem of resistance should be counteracted on the...

Background: Tobacco smoking is one of the leading public health problems in the world. It is also possible to prevent and/or reduce the harm from tobacco use through the use of cost-effective tobacco control measures. However, most of this evidence comes from developed countries and little...

Background: The Investigating Choice Experiments for the Preferences of Older People (ICEPOP) programme developed a capability-based measure of general quality of life (QOL): the ICEPOP CAPability (ICECAP-O) instrument. ICECAP-O was originally intended for use in the economic evaluation of...

Background: Fibromyalgia (FM) is a chronic disorder characterized by persistent and widespread pain, often accompanied with fatigue, sleep disturbance and other symptoms. FM affects a population mostly of a productive age and is thus associated with significant lost productivity and disability,...

Background: The REDUCE trial examined whether chemoprevention with the dual 5-alpha reductase inhibitor, dutasteride, reduced risk of prostate cancer (PCa) detection on biopsy. Objective: We examined the cost effectiveness of dutasteride compared with placebo in preventing PCa in men at...

Background: Generic drugs have been advocated to decrease the proportion of healthcare costs devoted to drugs, but are still underused. Objective: To assess citizens' preferences for brand name drugs (BNDs) compared with generic drugs for treating acute and chronic conditions. Methods: A...

Background: Consideration of public preferences is desirable when making decisions on the subsidy of pharmaceuticals. Little is known about the preferences of the public for pharmaceutical funding decisions, and no study has directly compared the preferences of members of a pharmaceutical...

In Germany, the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) makes recommendations for ceiling prices of drugs based on an evaluation of the relationship between costs and effectiveness. To set ceiling prices, IQWiG uses the following decision rule: the incremental...

Background: Patients with gallbladder and common bile duct stones are generally treated by pre-operative endoscopic sphincterotomy (ES) followed by laparoscopic cholecystectomy (POES). Recently, a meta-analysis has shown that intra-operative ES during laparoscopic cholecystectomy (IOES) results...