title: Confidence intervals for cost/effectiveness ratios.
abstract: The reduction of costs is becoming increasingly important in the medical field. The relevant topic of many clinical trials is not effectiveness per se, but rather cost-effectiveness ratios. Surprisingly, no statistical tools for analyzing cost-effectiveness ratios have been provided in the medical literature yet. This paper explains the gap in the literature, and provides a first technique for obtaining confidence intervals for cost-effectiveness ratios. The technique does not use sophisticated tools to achieve maximal optimality, but seeks for tractability and ease of application while still satisfying all formal statistical requirements.
authors.affiliation: Medical Decision Making Unit, University of Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wakker
authors.forename: M P
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Klaassen
mesh_terms: D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D006302:Health Services Research / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D017059:Models, Econometric; D015203:Reproducibility of Results