Background:Background: National EQ-5D value sets are developed because preferences for health may vary in different populations. UK values are lower than US values for most of the 243 possible EQ-5D health states. Although similar protocols were used for data collection, analytic choices...

Treatment of adult chickenpox with aciclovir is controversial because of the relatively high cost of medication and small proven benefits of therapy. A decision-tree model was used to estimate the cost effectiveness of aciclovir, from third-party payer and societal perspectives: the incremental...

Depressive illness is a common, often unrecognised and untreated condition with substantial associated costs, particularly indirect costs (e.g. lost productivity and absenteeism). The improved tolerability profile of fluoxetine and associated lower discontinuation rates, the relative safety of...

Background:Background: Cost-effectiveness analysis of pharmaceutical and other treatments for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) has the potential to improve access to services by demonstrating the value of treatment to public and private payers, but methods for measuring QALYs in...

Background: Osteoporosis is recognized as a serious health condition in developed as well as developing countries. There are no accurate estimates of the extent of the burden of osteoporosis in New Zealand. The purpose of this study was to estimate the economic burden of osteoporosis in New...

Economic evaluations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) incorporate utilities through multi-attribute utility (MAU) measures, most commonly the EQ-5D, to report health-related quality-of-life (HR-QOL) changes or differences. Questions have been raised about the sensitivity of these...

The objective of this paper is to examine how well the QALY captures the health gains generated by cancer treatments, with particular focus on the methods for constructing QALYs preferred by the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). Data were obtained using a keyword...

When going 'beyond the patient', to measure QALYs for unpaid carers, a number of additional methodological considerations and value judgements must be made. While there is no theoretical reason to restrict the measurement of QALYs to patients, decisions have to be made about which carers to...