The economic burden of diabetic retinopathy in Germany in 2002.

Background: The aims of our study were to describe the costs associated with diabetic retinopathy (DR), and to evaluate its economic impact in Germany.

Methods: Forty-one German ophthalmologists, randomly selected from a physicians' database in Germany, provided information on adult Type 1 and Type 2 diabetic patients with DR (n = 207). This information included socio-demographics, clinical characteristics and resource use during the year 2002.

Constructing an Index for the Subjective Well-being Under Neuroleptics scale (SWN), short form: applying structural equation modeling for testing reliability and validity of the index.

Structural equation modeling (SEM) has been widely used in psychology and sociology for testing validity of measurement instruments. However, this statistical technique has so far played minor role in quality-of-life research. The main objective of this paper is to demonstrate the potential of SEM for constructing and testing the validity of a Subjective Well-being under Neuroleptics (SWN) index for patients with schizophrenia.

[Costs of long-term complications in type 2 diabetes patients in Germany. Results of the CODE-2 Study].

Methods: In the German arm of CODE-2((R)) (Costs of Diabetes in Europe - Type 2), medical, demographic and economic data were collected retrospectively for a period of 1 year on the basis of medical files of 809 patients by personal interviews with 135 primary care physicians. The results were extrapolated to the German diabetes type 2 population. The influence of micro- and macrovascular complications on total costs was analyzed.

Bootstrap confidence intervals for costs-of-illness of type 2 diabetes mellitus in Germany.

Objective: The Costs of Diabetes in Europe-Type 2 study (CODE-2, SmithKline Beecham plc) measures costs of managing patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus in Germany. The aim of this analysis was to assess the uncertainty of these estimates.

Design And Setting: The German study arm was based on a sample of 809 patients with type 2 diabetes registered in general practices.