(Press-News.org) Aneurysm screening for men aged over 65 is cost effective and rescreening those at highest risk, at least once, should be considered, suggests a study published on bmj.com today.
Abdominal aortic aneurysms (caused by ballooning of the artery wall) usually occur in men aged between 65 and 75 years old and are more common among smokers. If the artery wall ruptures, the risk of death is high, but aneurysms at risk of rupture can be detected by screening and surgically repaired.
One-off screening for men aged over 65 is known to be cost effective and national screening programmes are currently being implemented in England and Scotland. But many other European countries have not yet issued guidance on screening.
So a team of researchers in Denmark, where national screening has not yet been implemented, set out to assess the benefits and cost effectiveness of different strategies for abdominal aortic aneurysm screening.
They used a prediction model with a hypothetical population of 100,000 men aged 65 years to test four different screening strategies: no screening; once per lifetime screening; twice per lifetime screening with a 5-year interval; and lifetime screening every five years.
Their results confirm that screening is highly cost effective compared with no screening and suggest that rescreening individuals with a high rupture risk (aortic artery diameter 25-29 mm) at least once more during their lifetime may be the most cost effective option.
For example, if high risk individuals were rescreened once after five years, an additional 452 per 100,000 would be detected and it would cost £10,013 per quality adjusted life year (QALY) - well within the cost effectiveness threshold of £20,000 set by the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).
In contrast, lifetime rescreening every five years would detect an additional 794 men per 100,000 but would cost £29,680 per QALY.
For the two rescreening strategies, the number of elective operations was estimated to increase from 861 per 100,000 with no screening to 1,496 and 1,530 per 100,000 respectively, if screening was repeated after five years or at five-year intervals for lifetime.
The number of acute (emergency) operations was estimated to fall from 610 per 100,000 with no screening to 363 and 360 per 100,000 respectively for repeat screening and five-year interval screening, while the aneurysm related death rate was reduced from 788 to 520 and 511 per 100,000 respectively.
This study confirms the cost effectiveness of screening versus no screening and suggests that some form of rescreening is likely to be cost effective, say the authors.
However, the optimal choice of rescreening strategy appears to be uncertain and further research is needed to establish the long term costs and benefits of rescreening, they conclude.
INFORMATION: END
A group of US researchers has produced a robotic set of legs which they believe is the first to fully model walking in a biologically accurate manner.
The neural architecture, musculoskeletal architecture and sensory feedback pathways in humans have been simplified and built into the robot, giving it a remarkably human-like walking gait that can be viewed in this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnD7LqisBhM&feature=youtu.be.
The biological accuracy of this robot, which has been presented today, Friday 6 July, in IOP Publishing's Journal of Neural Engineering, ...
Ottawa (July 5th, 2012) – An international expert panel has assessed that decisions regarding science funding and performance can't be determined by metrics alone. A combination of performance indicators and expert judgment are the best formula for determining how to allocate science funding.
The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) spends approximately one billion dollars a year on scientific research. Over one-third of that goes directly to support discovery research through its flagship Discovery Grants Program (DGP). However, concerns ...
In secrecy, the "apps" forward private data to a third party. Computer scientists from Saarbrücken have developed a new approach to prevent this data abuse. They can put a stop to the data theft through the app "SRT AppGuard". The chief attraction: For the protection to work, it is not necessary to identify the suspicious programs in advance, nor must the operating system be changed. Instead, the freely available app attacks the program code of the digital spies.
"My smartphone knows everything about me, starting with my name, my phone number, my e-mail address, my interests, ...
The earth is shaken daily by strong earthquakes recorded by a number of seismic stations worldwide. Tectonic tremor, however, is a new type of seismic signal that seismologist started studying only within the last few years. Tremor is less hazardous than earthquakes and occurs at greater depth. The link between tremor and earthquakes may provide clues about the more destructive earthquakes that occur at shallower depths. Geophysicists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) collected seismic data of tectonic tremor in California. These data are now being evaluated in ...
The immunosuppressive drug fingolimod (trade name: Gilenya®) is approved for the treatment of highly-active relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) in adults. In an early benefit assessment pursuant to "Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products" (AMNOG), the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) assessed whether fingolimod offers an added benefit compared with the present standard therapy.
According to the findings of the assessment, patients with a rapidly progressive and severe course of disease who take fingolimod experience ...
Over the past year, some news reports have questioned the long-term viability and popularity of daily deal companies, but the industry shows no evidence of slowing down, according to a new study from Rice University.
In the study, "How Businesses Fare With Daily Deals As They Gain Experience: A Multi-Time Period Study of Daily Deal Performance," Utpal Dholakia examines performance of daily deals using survey data from 641 small- and medium-sized businesses obtained at three time periods: April-May 2011, October 2011, and May 2012. Dholakia is a professor of management ...
Around seven percent of adults suffer from an intolerance to wine. This is the result of a survey presented by Peter Wigand and co-authors in the current edition of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztelb Int 2012; 109 (25): 437-44).
The authors evaluated 948 questionnaires that were returned from the 4000 sent out to randomly selected people between the ages of 20 and 69 years. They found that women (8.9%) were more often affected by an intolerance to wine than men (5.2%). The most commonly reported reactions included flushed and itchy skin and a runny nose. ...
EAST LANSING, Mich. — The stock market should be regulated only during times of extraordinary financial disruptions when speculators can destroy healthy businesses, according to a new study led by a Michigan State University scholar.
The study, in the Journal of Financial Economics, is one of the first to suggest when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission should get involved in the market.
The answer: rarely. The SEC should step in only when outside financial disruptions make it impossible for large shareholders to fend off "short sellers" – or speculators betting ...
Does being an intense mother make women unhappy? According to a new study by Kathryn Rizzo and colleagues, from the University of Mary Washington in the US, women who believe in intensive parenting - i.e., that women are better parents than men, that mothering should be child-centred, and that children should be considered sacred and are fulfilling to parents - are more likely to have negative mental health outcomes. The work is published online in Springer's Journal of Child and Family Studies.
Parenting can be quite challenging and requires wide-ranging skills and expertise ...
Using piezoelectric materials, researchers have replicated the muscle motion of the human eye to control camera systems in a way designed to improve the operation of robots. This new muscle-like action could help make robotic tools safer and more effective for MRI-guided surgery and robotic rehabilitation.
Key to the new control system is a piezoelectric cellular actuator that uses a novel biologically inspired technology that will allow a robot eye to move more like a real eye. This will be useful for research studies on human eye movement as well as making video feeds ...
