Capillary whole blood point-of-care instruments for prothrombin time testing have been available for the last 10 years for use both in an office or hospital setting as well as at home by patients for self-monitoring of oral anticoagulant therapy. There are currently 4 types of instruments...

The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the epidemiology, diagnosis, screening and pharmacotherapy of Chlamydia trachomatis infections in adolescents and adults, together with a critical review of economic studies published on this topic. C. trachomatis continues to produce enormous...

Dramatic progress has recently been made in defining the pathogenesis and treatment of HIV infection. For the first time in the history of the AIDS epidemic, clinicians have at their disposal an understanding of the replication kinetics of HIV, reliable assays to measure viral load, an...

Coronary heart disease (CHD) emerged in North America and Europe as a leading cause of disease and death in the mid 20th century, and is now rapidly increasing in developing nations. By the mid 1980s, American and European academic institutions had issued several sets of guidelines indicating...

In the absence of evidence in the literature on cost factors in the management of leprosy, a reference is made to the sporadic attempts to study costs of case detection and treatment. Such studies indicate that in the currently declining phase of leprosy endemicity, employing a conventionally...

This article describes 3 approaches to improving diabetes care in a health maintenance organisation (HMO) setting. The first approach was to identify which patients had not received a dilated eye examination in the past year, notify both them and their physician, and provide each with...

Outpatient parenteral antibacterial therapy (OPAT) is an increasingly popular means of containing the costs of antibacterial therapy, by avoiding the need for hospitalisation or allowing early discharge from hospital, in patients with serious infections. It also offers increased comfort and...