Family Medicine Update

Economic evaluation of early administration of prednisolone and/or aciclovir for the treatment of Bell’s palsy.

Fam Pract. 2009 Feb 25;

Authors: Hernández R, Sullivan F, Donnan P, Swan I, Vale L,

OBJECTIVES: Bell’s palsy (BP), which causes facial paralysis, affects 11-40 people per 100 000 per annum in the UK. Its cause is unknown but as many as 30% of patients have continuing facial disfigurement, psychological difficulties and occasionally facial pain. We present an randomised controlled trial (RCT)-based economic evaluation of the early administration of steroids (prednisolone) and/or antivirals (acyclovir) compared to placebo, for treatment of BP. METHODS: The RCT was not powered to detect differences in the cost-effectiveness; therefore, we adopted a decision analytic model approach as a way of gaining precision in our cost-effectiveness comparisons [e.g. prednisolone only (PO) versus acyclovir only versus prednisolone and acyclovir versus placebo, prednisolone versus no prednisolone (NP) and acyclovir versus no acyclovir]. We assumed that trial interventions affect the probability of being cured/not cured but their consequences are independent of the initial therapy. We used the percentage of individuals with a complete recovery (based on House-Brackmann grade = 1) at 9 months and Quality Adjusted Life Years (e.g. derived on responses to the Health Utilities Index III) as measures of effectiveness. Other parameter estimates were obtained from trial data. RESULTS: PO dominated-i.e. was less costly and more effective-all other therapy strategies in the four arms model [77% probability of cost-effective (CE)]. Moreover, Prednisolone dominated NP (77% probability of being CE at pound30 000 threshold) while no acyclovir dominated aciclovir (85% chance of CE), in the two arms models, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Treatment of BP with prednisolone is likely to be considered CE while treatment with acyclovir is highly unlikely to be considered CE. Further data on costs and utilities would be useful to confirm findings.

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Recruitment of practices in primary care research: the long and the short of it.

Fam Pract. 2009 Feb 27;

Authors: Goodyear-Smith F, York D, Petousis-Harris H, Turner N, Copp J, Kerse N, Grant C

OBJECTIVE: To determine factors that facilitated or hindered recruitment of general practices into a large New Zealand primary care project that aimed to determine general practice characteristics of immunization coverage. METHODS: The project had a multi-level recruitment strategy requiring recruitment of randomly selected practices before randomly selecting GPs, practice nurses and caregivers of children enrolled at those practices. Detailed quantitative and qualitative recruitment data were recorded on an access database. Post-recruitment, recruiters underwent semi-structured interviews. Analysis was mixed method, with triangulation of descriptive statistics of the number of calls and time course to recruitment and general inductive thematic analysis of qualitative data. RESULTS: Identifying key decision makers and how individual practice processes work can save significant recruitment time. Factors identified as assisting practice recruitment included using a personal approach from doctor to doctor, getting buy-in from all practice staff, streamlining the research process to minimize disruption to the practice and flexibility to accommodate practices. CONCLUSIONS: The task of recruiting should not be underestimated. Adequate time and resource need to be allocated from the onset. Long periods where practices have no added burdens such as audits, mass vaccination programmes or influenza season are unlikely, therefore there are always considerable challenges in recruiting practices for research. Remaining flexible to individual practice styles and influences and acknowledging the commitment of participants is important.

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Evaluating and understanding articles about treatment.

Am Fam Physician. 2009 Apr 15;79(8):668-70

Authors: Shaughnessy AF

Each year physicians must decide which of the thousands of newly published articles they will take time to read. To determine which articles are the most clinically useful, physicians should assess their relevance, validity, and clinical importance. Using these criteria can drastically decrease the number of articles physicians need to read.

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