Dear friends,
We are planning to do an economic evaluation of two alternative diagnostic
tests. Surveying the current literature, many authors report a
cost-effectiveness ratio in the form of 'cost per case diagnosed' for
economic evaluation of tests. However, this approach ignores the economic
consequences of, for instance, false negatives and false postives that
result from the alternative diagnostic tests. Reporting a unitary measure
of effectiveness (cases found) whilst ignoring other substantial outcomes
(value of true negatives, false positives and false negatives) does not seem
to capture the full economic consequences of alternative tests. If any of
you are aware of any literature where this problem has been tackled, would
you please let us know.
Cheers!
Arri
Justin
Dr A Coomarasamy, MRCOG
Reseach Fellow Birmingham Women's Hospital, UK
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