The resources devoted to managing metastatic prostate cancer are enormous, yet little attention has been given to directly measuring the economic consequences of treatment alternatives. The purpose of this article was to evaluate the pharmacoeconomics of available treatments for metastatic...

Background: Cost-effectiveness analyses worldwide assume that the price of any single drug increases with inflation. New guidance from the Pharmaceutical Management Agency in New Zealand suggests that, when it is known that a generic drug will be available in the near future, a best estimate of...

A greater understanding of value associated with new pharmaceutical products should lead to better decision-making. Most commonly cost-effectiveness ratios (CERs) are used to indicate value; however, researchers have recently shown that CER estimates are rarely used by decision-makers in making...

This article describes the components that should be included as indirect costs to be consistent with economic theory in studies conducted from a societal perspective. The recently proposed method of how to estimate indirect costs, the friction-cost approach, is shown to exclude many aspects of...

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...

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...

Introduction: In adults with previously untreated chronic hepatitis C (CHC), the combination of peginterferon alpha-2a plus ribavirin produces a higher rate of sustained virological response (SVR) than interferon alpha-2b plus ribavirin, but it is still unproven whether this increase is cost...

Background: Smoking cessation should be encouraged in order to increase life expectancy and reduce smoking-related healthcare costs. Results of a randomised trial suggested that reimbursing the costs of smoking cessation treatment (SCT) may lead to an increased use of SCT and an increased number...