The cost-effectiveness of routine histologic examination.
TLDR
Before definitive policy conclusions can be made, additional studies are needed to better define the trade-off between cost and the value of information and the incidence of detecting clinically significant disease.Abstract:
Although the histologic examination of routine tissues, such as hernia sacs and intervertebral disks, has shown a low incidence of detecting clinically significant unsuspected disease, the cost-effectiveness of histologic examination has not been determined. By using a theoretical model that assumed variable costs and gains in life expectancy secondary to detecting clinically significant disease, a threshold incidence of disease detection at which histologic examination is cost-effective was determined. By using the University of Iowa (Iowa City) cost of examination (approximately $25), at least I of every 2,000 examinations would have to show clinically significant disease for histologic examination to be cost-effective. This threshold incidence decreases as production costs decrease or life-year values increase. Before definitive policy conclusions can be made, additional studies are needed to better define the trade-off between cost and the value of information and the incidence of detecting clinically significant disease.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Routine surgical pathology in general surgery
TL;DR: A retrospective analysis of the value of routine histopathological examination performed in daily general surgical practice suggests that such analysis may be omitted for certain routine samples.
Journal ArticleDOI
Cost and Effectiveness of Routine Pathological Examination of Operative Specimens Obtained During Primary Total Hip and Knee Replacement in Patients with Osteoarthritis
TL;DR: Routine pathological examination of surgical specimens from patients undergoing primary total hip or knee replacement because of the clinical diagnosis of osteoarthritis had limited cost-effectiveness at this hospital due to the low prevalence of findings that altered patient management.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Cost-Effectiveness of Immunohistochemistry
TL;DR: Using theoretical modeling, immunohistochemistry is extremely cost-effective, having implications in an era of managed care when providers attempt to trim laboratory services.
Journal ArticleDOI
Comparison of clinical and histologic diagnoses in 16,587 total joint arthroplasties: implications for orthopedic and pathologic practices.
TL;DR: The findings demonstrated significantly more diagnostic discrepancies and discordance than has been suggested by the previously published literature and may be due to more careful diagnostic analyses of orthopedic specimens than in other institutions.
Related Papers (5)
Surgical pathology of the intervertebral disc. Is routine examination necessary
Pier Boutin,Howard Hogshead +1 more