Search results for "Cost-benefit"
showing 10 items of 153 documents
Assessing disproportionate costs to achieve good ecological status of water bodies in a Mediterranean river basin.
2011
Water management is becoming increasingly important as the demand for water grows, diversifies, and includes more complex environmental concerns. The Water Framework Directive (WFD) seeks to achieve a good ecological status for all European Community water bodies by 2015. To achieve this objective, economic consideration of water management must be given to all decision-making processes. Exemption (time or level of stringency) from the objectives of the EU Directive can be justified by proving that the cost of implementing measures is disproportionate to the benefits. This paper addresses the issue of disproportionate costs through a cost-benefit analysis (CBA). To predict the costs, the fu…
Cost-Effectiveness of Pneumococcal Vaccination of Older People: A Study in 5 Western European Countries
1999
Pneumococcal vaccination of older persons is thought to be cost-effective in preventing pneumococcal pneumonia, but evidence of clinical protection is uncertain. Because there is better evidence of vaccination effectiveness against invasive pneumococcal disease, we determined the cost-effectiveness of pneumococcal vaccination of persons agedor =65 years in preventing hospital admission for both invasive pneumococcal disease and pneumococcal pneumonia in 5 western European countries. In the base case analyses, the cost-effectiveness ratios for preventing invasive disease varied from approximately 11,000 to approximately 33,000 European currency units (ecu) per quality-adjusted life year (QAL…
Handheld and cost-effective Fourier lightfield microscope
2022
In this work, the design, building, and testing of the most portable, easy-to-build, robust, handheld, and cost-effective Fourier Lightfield Microscope (FLMic) to date is reported. The FLMic is built by means of a surveillance camera lens and additional off-the-shelf optical elements, resulting in a cost-effective FLMic exhibiting all the regular sought features in lightfield microscopy, such as refocusing and gathering 3D information of samples by means of a single-shot approach. The proposed FLMic features reduced dimensions and light weight, which, combined with its low cost, turn the presented FLMic into a strong candidate for in-field application where 3D imaging capabilities are pursu…
Design, Calibration, and Application of a Robust, Cost-Effective, and High-Resolution Lensless Holographic Microscope
2022
Lensless holographic microscope (LHM) is an emerging very promising technology that provides high-quality imaging and analysis of biological samples without utilizing any lens for imaging. Due to its small size and reduced price, LHM can be a very useful tool for the point-of-care diagnosis of diseases, sperm assessment, or microfluidics, among others, not only employed in advanced laboratories but also in poor and/or remote areas. Recently, several LHMs have been reported in the literature. However, complete characterization of their optical parameters remains not much presented yet. Hence, we present a complete analysis of the performance of a compact, reduced cost, and high-resolution LH…
Economic evaluations of ergonomic interventions preventing work-related musculoskeletal disorders: a systematic review of organizational-level interv…
2017
Background Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSD) represent a major public health problem and economic burden to employers, workers and health insurance systems. This systematic review had two objectives: (1) to analyze the cost-benefit results of organizational-level ergonomic workplace-based interventions aimed at preventing WMSD, (2) to explore factors related to the implementation process of these interventions (obstacles and facilitating factors) in order to identify whether economic results may be due to a successful or unsuccessful implementation. Methods Systematic review. Studies were searched in eight electronic databases and in reference lists of included studies. Companio…
Nanostructured medical sutures with antibacterial properties
2014
Bacterial repellence in suture materials is a desirable property that can potentially improve the healing process by preventing infection. We describe a method for generating nanostructures at the surface of commercial sutures of different composition, and their potential for preventing biofilm formation. We show how bacteria attachment is altered in the presence of nanosized topographies and identify optimum designs for preventing it without compromising biocompatibility and applicability in terms of nanostructure robustness or tissue friction. These studies open new possibilities for flexible and cost-effective realization of topography-based antibacterial coatings for absorbable biomedic…
Utility-based criteria for selecting patients with hepatocellular carcinoma for liver transplantation: A multicenter cohort study using the alpha-fet…
2015
The lifetime utility of liver transplantation (LT) in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is still controversial. The aim of this study was to ascertain when LT is cost-effective for HCC patients, with a view to proposing new transplant selection criteria. The study involved a real cohort of potentially transplantable Italian HCC patients (n = 2419 selected from the Italian Liver Cancer group database) who received nontransplant therapies. A non-LT survival analysis was conducted, the direct costs of therapies were calculated, and a Markov model was used to compute the cost utility of LT over non-LT therapies in Italian and US cost scenarios. Post-LT survival was calculated using t…
Cost-effectiveness analysis of the first-line EGFR-TKIs in patients with advanced EGFR-mutated non-small-cell lung cancer.
2021
To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of first-line treatments, such as erlotinib, gefitinib, afatinib, dacomitinib, and osimertinib, for patients diagnosed with stage IIIB/IV NSCLC harboring EGFR mutations.A partitioned survival model was developed to estimate quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) and incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) from the perspective of the Spanish National Health System. Two Bayesian NMAs were performed independently, by using the polynomial fraction method to fit Kaplan-Meier curves for overall survival and progression-free survival. Deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were performed to evaluate the uncertainty.The ICER was calculated for the fou…
Treatment of pancreatic cancer: A narrative review of cost-effectiveness studies.
2013
Cancer of the pancreas is the second most frequent digestive cancer in the US, accounting for about 44,000 new cases per year. In Europe, it is the sixth most frequent cancer, accounting for 2.8% of cancers in men and 3.2% in women. With a five-year survival of less than 10%, it is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related death. The majority of cases are diagnosed above the age of 65 and in about 60% of cases at an advanced stage, explaining that little improvement has been observed in survival over the past 30 years. Radical surgery offers the only curative treatment of pancreatic cancer. Alternative or combined therapeutic options in particular consist of adjuvant or neoadjuvant chemothe…
Osimertinib in first-line treatment of advanced EGFR-mutated non-small-cell lung cancer: a cost–effectiveness analysis
2019
Aim: Osimertinib improves progression-free survival in first-line EGFR mutation–positive non-small-cell lung cancer. Materials & methods: A Markov cohort model including costs, utilities and disutilities, was conducted to estimate quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) and incremental cost–effectiveness ratio when treating with osimertinib versus standard first-line tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). Results: Osimertinib presented higher QALYs (0.61) compared with standard EGFR–TKIs (0.42). Osimertinib costs were €83,258.99, in comparison with €29,209.45 for the standard EGFR–TKIs. An incremental cost–effectiveness ratio of €273,895.36/QALY was obtained for osimertinib. Conclusion: Osimerti…