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Background: Currently, few studies investigated the economic burden of atopic dermatitis (AD) in adult patients and specifically the estimation of out‐of‐pocket costs. Patients with skin disorders primarily use comfort care to ease dryness, itch or pain, and the costs of comfort care are not subject to any reimbursement from mandatory or complementary insurance. Objective: The purpose of this study was to measure the medical and non‐medical expenses paid by the patient. Methods: Eczema Cohort Longitudinal Adults was a non‐interventional study that aimed to assess the burden of AD in terms of quality of life and financial consequences. A self‐assessment questionnaire was distributed to adult patients who were cared in four French hospitals. Patients were asked to list the resources consumed for the treatment of AD during the last 12 months and to estimate the corresponding amount of money they had to pay out of their own pockets. The severity of AD was subjected to a stratification based on the PO‐SCORAD score. Results: A total of 1024 patients answered the questionnaire: 31.9% with severe AD, 40.4% with moderate AD and 27.6% with mild AD. The mean annual out‐of‐pocket cost was €462.1 for severe AD and €247.4 for moderate AD. Emollients were the most commonly used product: 74.4% for an average out‐of‐pocket cost of €151.4. The out‐of‐pocket costs increased significantly with the severity: 27% of patients with severe AD declared having bought specially textured clothes, while 19% of patients with moderate AD reported the same. The corresponding mean out‐of‐pocket costs were €162 and €91, respectively. Conclusion: The amount of out‐of‐pocket costs for patients with AD for essential medical and non‐medical expenses is relatively high, compared to the average out‐of‐pocket cost for French households. Integration of these essential resources into the list of reimbursed products and services appears necessary for a better coverage of AD. Linked Commentary: A. Zink. J Eur Acad Dermatol Venereol 2019; 33: 1817. https://doi.org/10.1111/jdv.15856. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our objective was to review the linguistic validation of the 20 item-ChronIc Venous dIsease quality-of-life Questionnaire (CIVIQ-20) in the countries that have used it since its publication in 1996. Seventeen linguistic versions of CIVIQ-20 were validated using forward/backward methodology in patients presenting with chronic venous disease, stages C0s to C4 of the CEAP (clinical, aetiological, anatomical and pathological) classification (patients with venous ulcers were excluded). Most obstacles in the cross-cultural validation of CIVIQ-20 related to content and semantic equivalence. Confirmation of cultural relevance by experts with the native language as their mother tongue and the use of forward/backward translation methodology partly resolved these difficulties. CIVIQ-20 is valid for the assessment of treatment effects in multinational studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The factorial instability of the CIVIQ-20 social dimension in different populations has necessitated the development of a new stable questionnaire to interpret results from international studies. Objective: Construction of a stable and psychometrically validated questionnaire from CIVIQ-20. Methods and major findings: A prospective, international study was used to construct a stable CIVIQ scale and to validate its psychometric properties. An iterative process was implemented to eliminate the more unstable items (six), and the social and physical dimensions were combined. The resulting instrument comprised 14 items, split into three dimensions (pain, physical, and psychological), and was named CIVIQ-14. The stability of the CIVIQ-14 factorial structure was confirmed in Polish, Czech, Spanish, and French populations using principal component analysis and multitrait/multimethod analysis. Psychometric assessment demonstrated that CIVIQ-14 was reliable (intra-class coefficient >0.8; weighted kappa >0.8), valid (correlation coefficients between dimension scores and clinical severity scores between 0.3 and 0.6), and sensitive (effect sizes >0.6 for psychological dimension; >0.8 for the other dimensions). Conclusion: CIVIQ-14 is a reliable, valid, and sensitive instrument applicable to international studies of patients with chronic venous disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence recommends vinorelbine (VNB), paclitaxel, docetaxel, and gemcitabine in the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer. An economic model was prepared to determine the comparative cost of these agents, including the new oral formulation of VNB from a United Kingdom National Health System perspective. Clinical effectiveness was determined from published trials. Costs of drug acquisition, administration, toxicity management, and patient transportation costs were calculated from reference publications. A Markov model was used to estimate the cost per patient over 52 weeks. Intravenous VNB, gemcitabine, paclitaxel, and docetaxel incur annual follow-up costs of 3,746 pounds, 5,332 pounds, 5,977 pounds, and 6,766 pounds, respectively, while oral VNB with outpatient administration on d1, and self-administration at home on d8 every 21 days has a cost per patient per year of 2,888 pounds. Oral VNB allows further hospital resources savings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To evaluate patient outcome and the efficiency of stays in intensive care units (ICUs).Design: Prospective study.Setting: Seven ICUs of teaching hospitals in the Paris area.Patients: Two hundred eleven stays including one in three consecutive patients admitted from September to November 1996.Measurements and Main Results: For each patient, the following information was collected during the ICU stay: diagnosis, severity scores, organ failures, workload, cost and mortality. A cost-effectiveness ratio was computed for 176 stays with at least one organ failure, at hospital discharge and 6 months later. Quality of life was measured with EuroQol questionnaires 6 months after discharge in 64 patients representing 62 % of the patients contacted. The mean total ICU cost per stay was US$ 14,130 (+/- 6,550) (higher for non-survivors--US$ 19,060, median 10,590--than for survivors US$ 12,370, median 5,780). The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio was US$ 1,150 per life-year saved and the incremental cost-utility ratio was US$ 4,100 per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) saved, without discounting. These results compare favourably with other health-care options. However substantial variations were observed according to age, severity, diagnosis, number of organ failures and discount rate. Intoxication had the lowest ratio (US$ 620/QALY) and acute renal insufficiency the highest (US$ 30,625/QALY).Conclusions: This work provides medical and economic information on ICU stays in teaching hospitals and enables comparisons with other health-care options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compared efficacy and impact on the comfort of ibuprofen (7.5 mg/kg per dose), aspirin (10 mg/kg/dose) and paracetamol (10 mg/kg per dose) on children with fever aged 6–24 months in an open, randomised study with three parallel groups. The main criterion for efficacy was area under the curve (AUC) of percentage temperature reduction. Comfort was assessed on scores depending on general behaviour and degree of relief. General behaviour was assessed on a verbal scale and on a visual analogue scale (VAS) and the degree of relief was assessed in relation to baseline on a verbal scale. The efficacy of ibuprofen was better than that of aspirin or paracetamol. In spite of more adverse events, the comfort scores were significantly in favour of ibuprofen 6 h after the first dose of treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality of life may be considerably reduced in patients who are suffering from chronic lower limb venous insufficiency, although existing generic quality of life instruments (NHP, SF-36 or SIP) cannot completely identify their specific complaints. The Chronic Venous Insufficiency Questionnaire (CIVIQ) has been developed by iterative process. First, a pilot group of 20 patients was used to identify a number of important features of quality of life affected by venous insufficiency, other than physical symptoms of discomfort. A second study involving 2,001 subjects was used to reduce the number of items. Subjects were asked to score both the severity of their problems and the importance they attributed to each problem on a 5-point Likert scale. The importance items found in patients with venous insufficiency were subjected to factorial analyses (PCA, PAF). The final version is a 20-item self-administered questionnaire which explores four dimensions: psychological, physical and social functioning and pain. Internal consistency of the questionnaire was validated for each dimension (Cronbach's alpha > 0.820 for three out of four factors). Reproducibility was confirmed in a 60 patient test-retest study. Pearson's correlation coefficients for both the four dimension subscales and for the global score at 2-week intervals were greater than 0.940. Finally, the questionnaire was tested in a randomized clinical trial of 934 patients in order to assess responsiveness and the convergent validity of the instrument, together with the patient's own quality of life. This study demonstrated that convergence was valid: Pearson's correlation coefficients between clinical score differences and quality of life score differences were small (from 0.199-0.564) but were statistically different from 0 (p < 0.001). Standardized response mean (SRM) and effect size (ES) were calculated to assess sensitivity to change. SRM and ES both demonstrated considerable responsiveness to change (> 0.80). Reliability, face, content, construct validity and responsiveness were also determined for this specific quality of life questionnaire relating to venous insufficiency. Results suggest that this questionnaire may be used with confidence to assess quality of life in clinical trials on chronic venous insufficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]