Cost-Effectiveness of Treatment for Tobacco Dependence : A Systematic Review of the Evidence
Good decisions on which health interventions to invest can be facilitated by high quality evaluations of the cost-effectiveness of interventions. Although there are several reviews of evaluations of the cost-effectiveness of smoking cessation progr...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2013
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2003/02/3888044/cost-effectiveness-treatment-tobacco-dependence-systematic-review-evidence http://hdl.handle.net/10986/13681 |
| Summary: | Good decisions on which health
interventions to invest can be facilitated by high quality
evaluations of the cost-effectiveness of interventions.
Although there are several reviews of evaluations of the
cost-effectiveness of smoking cessation programs, the
reviews have had little to say about the quality of the
studies. The present study tries to fill this gap by
thoroughly evaluating the quality of economic evaluations of
interventions to reduc e tobacco consumption. First, the
general characteristics of all the studies reviewed are
described, and then the quality of epidemiological
characteristics and of the economic evaluation is analyzed,
using a criteria list proposed by Drummond et al. (1997).
The analysis finds that the quality of many aspects of many
of the studies leaves much to be desired, judged against the
guidelines offered by Drummond et al. However, the studies
do consistently conclude that stop-smoking interventions are
cost-effective, and this conclusion is robust when
sensitivity analyses are performed. The cost-effectiveness
ratios estimated by the studies for smoking cessation
interventions are much lower than most other health care
treatments. The study this concludes that the broad
conclusion that treatments to reduce the number of smokers
are cost-effective at least in relative terms, is likely to
be true, despite the concerns expressed about the quality of
the economic evaluations. The implication for policymakers
is that smoking cessation interventions are worthwhile. |
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