Purpose: To provide a practical quantitative tool for appraising the quality of cost-effectiveness (CE) studies.
Methods: A committee comprising [corrected] of health economists selected a set of criteria for the instrument from an item pool. Data collected with a conjoint analysis survey on 120 international health economists were used to estimate weights for each criterion with a random effects regression model. To validate the grading system, a survey was sent to 60 individuals with health economics expertise. Participants first rated the quality of three CE studies on a visual analogue scale, and then evaluated each study using the grading system. Spearman rho and Wilcoxon tests were used to detect convergent validity and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) for discriminant validity. Agreement between the global rating by experts and the grading system was also examined.
Results: Sixteen criteria were selected. Their coefficient estimates ranged from 1.2 to 8.9, with a sum of 93.5 on a 100-point scale. The only insignificant criterion was "use of subgroup analyses." Both convergent validity and discriminant validity of the grading system were shown by the results of the Spearman rho (correlation coefficient = 0.78, P < 0.0001), Wilcoxon test (P = 0.53), and ANCOVA (F(3,146) = 5.97, p = 0.001). The grading system had good agreement with global rating by experts.
Conclusions: The instrument appears to be simple, internally consistent, and valid for measuring the perceived quality of CE studies. Applicability for use in clinical and resource allocation decision-making deserves further study.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/00005650-200301000-00007 | DOI Listing |
Sci Rep
January 2025
Department of Orthodontics, Hamdan Bin Mohammed College of Dental Medicine, Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Assessment of the quality of orthodontic care in a UAE-based orthodontic postgraduate training institution was conducted using multiple indices, including the Peer Assessment Rating (PAR), American Board of Orthodontics Objective Grading System (ABO-OGS), and Index of Complexity Outcome and Need (ICON). Retrospective evaluation of pre- and post-treatment records of patients (n = 201) treated with fixed orthodontic appliances was performed by two examiners Statistical analysis assessed the influence of gender, type of malocclusion, need for extraction, missed appointments and number of treating residents on treatment duration. The average numerical reduction of the PAR and ICON scores at the start and end of the treatment were 17.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To develop and validate a lesion-based grading system using clinicopathological and MRI features for predicting positive surgical margin (PSM) following robotic-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy (RALP) among prostate cancer (PCa) patients.
Methods: Consecutive MRI examinations of patients undergoing RALP for PCa were retrospectively collected from two medical institutions. Patients from center 1 undergoing RALP between January 2020 and December 2021 were included in the derivation cohort and those between January 2022 and December 2022 were allocated to the validation cohort.
Ann Intern Med
January 2025
Clinical Epidemiology and Research Center (CERC), Department of Biomedical Sciences, Humanitas University, and IRCCS Humanitas Research Hospital, Milan, Italy, and Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology ITMP, Allergology and Immunology, Berlin, Germany (H.J.S.).
Description: Artificial intelligence (AI) has been defined by the High-Level Expert Group on AI of the European Commission as "systems that display intelligent behaviour by analysing their environment and taking actions-with some degree of autonomy-to achieve specific goals." Artificial intelligence has the potential to support guideline planning, development and adaptation, reporting, implementation, impact evaluation, certification, and appraisal of recommendations, which we will refer to as "guideline enterprise." Considering this potential, as well as the lack of guidance for the use of AI in guidelines, the Guidelines International Network (GIN) proposes a set of principles for the development and use of AI tools or processes to support the health guideline enterprise.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEur J Phys Rehabil Med
January 2025
Rehabilitation Program, Department for Noncommunicable Diseases, Rehabilitation and Disability, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.
Cochrane Rehabilitation and the World Health Organization (WHO) Rehabilitation Program are collaborating to produce four Cochrane overviews of systematic reviews that synthesize the current evidence from health policy and systems research (HPSR) in rehabilitation. They will focus on the four pillars of HPSR identified by the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organization of Care (EPOC) taxonomy: delivery arrangements, financial arrangements, governance arrangements, and implementation strategies. The protocol describes why HPSR is currently needed in rehabilitation, provides detailed information on the four EPOC pillars in interaction with rehabilitation and reports the Cochrane methods that will be followed to produce the overviews.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThyroid
January 2025
Faculty of Medicine and Health, Northern Clinical School, Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) are a protective prognostic factor in several solid tumors and predict response to immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy. The prognostic impact of TILs in medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) is poorly understood. In this retrospective cohort study, we assessed the TILs profile of primary MTC tumors using the International TILs Working Group system and correlated this with clinicopathological prognostic variables, including the International Medullary Thyroid Cancer Grading System (IMTCGS) grade and survival outcomes.
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