1,720,961 research outputs found
Costs of patients suffering from multiple sclerosis in piedmont region: Evidence from administrative databases
No full textMultiple Sclerosis (MS) is a chronic and disabling disease characterized by demyelination of the central nervous system, which can lead to physical and cognitive impairment. The literature on MS cost-of-illness shows that (i) cost per patient is rather high; (ii) informal care and loss of productivity are the major cost components; (iii) health care costs have been showing a steady increase, mostly due to high costs of immunomodulator drugs launched into the market in the last fifteen years. The objective of this research is to estimate health resources consumption and costs of patients suffering from MS in Piedmont Region relying on administrative databases, that include information on drugs, outpatient and inpatient services consumed and covered by the Regional Government to patients affected by MS. Databases show (i) in 2008 a number of 109.9 patients per 100,000 population, (ii) a cost per patient of h6,103, with a 67% drugs incidence, (iii) a huge and significant decrease in costs from the younger to the elderly population, (iv) a small but statistically significant impact of co-morbidities on unit costs, and (v) a very costly proximity to death. Despite its limitations - e.g. database incompleteness, which did not allow us covering all health care services - this study shows that resource use and cost analysis may rely on administrative databases, thus avoiding (or integrating) prospective studies, which may be long and costly. © 2012 Springer International Publishing AG
Impact On Italian National Health Service Expenditure For The Treatment Of Venous Thromboembolism With Rivaroxaban
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Resource consumption and costs of treating pain in patients affected by cancer in a district of northeast Italy.
No full textWHO declared that pain is a relevant problem in public health and that opioids are the gold standard therapy for the treatment of moderate to severe pain. The present retrospective, epidemiological, observational study is aimed to evaluate resource consumption therapy in patients treated with opioids and died with a diagnosis of cancer in Treviso, a district in northeast Italy. For the monetisation of resource consumed, the Italian National Health Service perspective was adopted. For each patient, resource monetized were drugs (opioids, NSAIDs and adjuvants), hospitalizations with cancer diagnosis, diagnostic examinations and laboratory tests. All databases were linked in order to obtain patient profile of resource consumption. A total of 935 patients were included in the study. The incident opioid prescribed were for 60% morphine, 37% fentanyl, and 2.5% buprenorphine. The average length of treatment with opioids was 105+/-73 days. Of the patients included in the study, 79% received an anti-inflammatory drug (traditional NSAIDs and/or COX2 inhibitors), while 21% of patients treated with opioids never had an anti-inflammatory reimbursed prescription during the observation period. The average length of anti-inflammatory treatment was 133+/-83 days. For the vast majority of prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs, the received daily dose (RDD) was widely greater then the defined daily dose (DDD) before and during treatment with opioids, while for opioids the RDD was in line with the revised DDD for fentanyl, and less than the DDD for morphine and buprenorphine. The total daily cost per patient before the first prescription of opioids was euro 11.36 while after the first prescription of opioids, it increased to euro 21.12. This study confirms the under utilization of opioids in Italy both in terms of dosages and length of therapy
The outpatient cost of diabetes care in Italian diabetes centers
No full textObjective: To provide resource utilization patterns and cost estimates of outpatient care for types I and II diabetes mellitus in Italy, based on retrospectively collected data. Design: Multicenter, retrospective observational study analyzing individual costs in a sample of patients with diabetes mellitus. Study population: A total of 2260 patients were stratified into eight groups by type of diabetes, glycemic control, and age. Setting: Thirty-five centers for diabetes care in Italy. Results: The per-patient cost of treatment was €136.8 in two months for type I diabetes (N = 592) and €123.3 for type II diabetes (N = 1668). Pharmaceutical therapy consisting of antidiabetic drugs only accounted for only 32% to 36% of treatments cost in type I patients and between 13% and 24% in type II. Diagnostic tests accounted for 27% to 42% of treatment costs in patients with both type I and type II diabetes, day-hospital days accounted for 15% to 22% in type I, 25% to 27% in type II, and consultations accounted for 16% to 20% in type I patients and between 17% and 21% in type II diabetes. Conclusion: Despite limitations caused by the short period considered, and considering that in Italy the cost of diabetes has received limited attention, we believe this study presents some interesting information on the burden of diabetes in this country
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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