Reading and interpreting economic evaluations in rheumatoid arthritis: an assessment of selected instruments for critical appraisal.

Objective: To describe and compare the relative attributes (reliability, ease of use, applicability, and relevance) of different assessment tools for economic analyses as they pertain to rheumatoid arthritis (RA) literature.

Methods: An expert panel, comprising rheumatology researchers and clinicians, operationalized 2 economic appraisal instruments and applied them to 11 articles used for analysis. Each expert reviewed 3 articles, with each article independently reviewed by a pair of experts. A summary score for each article per appraisal instrument was calculated by dividing the number of items that received a "positive" response by the total number of items in the appraisal instrument.

Results: Scores for each article were similar across reviewers and appraisal instruments.

Conclusion: There is a need for a more comprehensive approach for evaluating this rapidly growing body of economic literature that is not only valid and reliable, but also easy to apply and understand. Although consistency between reviewers was good on both guidelines, inter-guideline discrepancies were noted and reviewers reported some difficulty in using the operationalized format.