Meta-analysis: antibiotics for prophylaxis against hemodialysis catheter-related infections.

Background: Catheter-related infections cause morbidity and mortality in patients undergoing hemodialysis.

Purpose: To examine whether topical or intraluminal antibiotics reduce catheter-related bloodstream infection compared with no antibiotic therapy in adults undergoing hemodialysis.

Data Sources: Electronic databases, trial registries, bibliographies, and conference proceedings up to October 2007, with no language restrictions.

Economic analysis of rotavirus-associated diarrhea in the metropolitan Toronto and Peel regions of Ontario.

Objective: To measure the economic cost of rotavirus-associated diarrhea for a selected group of families, in a nonexperimental setting, and to estimate the factors that influence these costs.

Design: Use and other socioeconomic data from a family survey (the Pediatric Rotavirus Epidemiology Study for Immunization) of children who tested positive for rotavirus were collected for the metropolitan Toronto and Peel regions of Ontario during the rotavirus season of 1997-1998. Service costs were estimated from provider data.

A test of prospect theory.

Objectives: Prospect theory (PT) hypothesizes that people judge states relative to a reference point, usually assumed to be their current health. States better than the reference point are valued on a concave portion of the utility function; worse states are valued on a convex portion. Using prospectively collected utility scores, the objective is to test empirically implications of PT.

Labour force participation among individuals with hepatitis C in the US.

Background: In 1996, the number of persons newly infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) in the US was estimated to be 36 000. As a chronic disease that primarily affects younger persons, hepatitis C has the potential to influence employment considerably.

Objective: To estimate employment effects associated with hepatitis C morbidity.

Descriptive patient data as an explanation for the variation in average daily costs in intensive care.

Intensive care patients require therapy that can vary considerably in type, duration and cost, so making it extremely difficult to predict patient resource use. Few studies measure actual costs; usually average daily costs are calculated and these do not reflect the variation in resource use between individual patients. The aim of this study was to analyse a data set of 193 critically ill adult patients to look for associations between routinely collected descriptive data and patient-specific costs.