Objectives: To review the economic evaluations (EEs) done in Italy by Italian authors, following a common scheme to allow some comparisons of the studies selected and with the international reviews.
Methods: We selected all the original studies published by Italian authors (in Italian or English) in national and international journals. The period considered was January 1994 to December 2001. Both full and partial economic evaluations were included. Three international databases were interrogated: MEDLINE, Embase, and HealthStar; further articles were added from the internal database of our center (CESAV), which also classifies Italian local publications and journals specialized in health economics.
Results: A total of ninety-nine studies were reviewed. More than half of the fifty-seven full EEs focused on drugs as type of intervention (n=38), followed by diagnostic screening (n=7). The NHS viewpoint was the most used (n=55 studies), followed by that of society (n=27) and hospitals (n=12). Sixty-eight studies only analyzed direct costs and twenty-nine included both direct and indirect costs. Twenty-five of the thirty-eight pharmacoeconomic full EEs were sponsored by companies. In sixteen of the twenty-five sponsored studies, the sponsor's products were the dominant alternative.
Conclusions: The review showed that, in Italy, like elsewhere, there is a gap between theory and practice in EEs, and sponsors can considerably affect the results of EEs.
目的回顾意大利作者在意大利进行的经济评估(EE),采用共同的方法,以便对所选研究进行比较,并与国际回顾进行比较:我们选择了意大利作者在国内和国际期刊上发表的所有原始研究(意大利语或英语)。研究时间为 1994 年 1 月至 2001 年 12 月。包括全部和部分经济评估。查询了三个国际数据库:此外,还从本中心的内部数据库(CESAV)中添加了更多文章,该数据库还对意大利本地出版物和卫生经济学专业期刊进行了分类:结果:共审查了 99 项研究。在 57 项完整的 EE 中,半数以上以药物作为干预类型(38 项),其次是诊断筛查(7 项)。使用最多的是国家医疗服务体系的观点(55 项研究),其次是社会观点(27 项)和医院观点(12 项)。68 项研究仅分析了直接成本,29 项研究同时分析了直接成本和间接成本。在 38 项药物经济学全 EE 中,有 25 项是由公司赞助的。在这 25 项赞助研究中,有 16 项研究的主要替代品是赞助商的产品:审查结果表明,在意大利,与其他地方一样,EEs 的理论与实践之间存在差距,赞助商会对 EEs 的结果产生很大影响。