title: Cost-effectiveness of screening for open angle glaucoma in developed countries.
abstract: As all developed countries are struggling with health care costs growing too large and too fast, the current performance and overburden of glaucoma services demand a reappraisal of current management strategies. The performance of the glaucoma care in western countries offers several opportunities to improve the simultaneous under- and over-diagnosis and treatment. Since available resources are finite, they should be targeted to produce the best eye health. There is an obvious need for prioritization of all interventions, including improving case finding. The limited evidence to date indicates that we do not have enough evidence to decide whether systematic population screening could be cost-effective in the developed world. This article gives an overview of the methods of economic evaluation and the evidence on cost-effectiveness of systematic screening for glaucoma in the developed world, need for future research and challenges related to evaluation of increasing economic literature as well as need to change behaviors on the basis of evidence.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ophthalmology, University of Oulu and Tampere University Hospital, Finland. anja.tuulonen@pshp.fi
authors.forename: Anja
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tuulonen
mesh_terms: D035843:Biomedical Research; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D019049:Developed Countries; D005901:Glaucoma / Q000175:diagnosis; D005902:Glaucoma, Open-Angle / Q000175:diagnosis*; D006801:Humans; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000191:economics* / Q000592:standards