title: The principles of cost-effectiveness analysis and their application.
abstract: The current healthcare environment requires the evaluation of both the costs and benefits of alternative interventions for a given clinical problem. Given the increased interest in the economic evaluation of healthcare interventions, this article briefly defines various forms of economic evaluations and describes some useful steps for conducting appraisals of cost-effectiveness analyses. Studies of competing methods of treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysms greater than 5 cm are used as a clinical example of interest to the readers of this Journal. Rather than actually conducting such an analysis with existing data, we describe the principles for conducting or reviewing an economic analysis with factitious data.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biobehavioral Nursing and Health Systems, School of Nursing, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. brendaz@u.washington.edu
authors.forename: Brenda K
authors.initials: BK
authors.lastname: Zierler
authors.forename: Darryl T
authors.initials: DT
authors.lastname: Gray
mesh_terms: D017544:Aortic Aneurysm, Abdominal / Q000628:therapy; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D006801:Humans