Published: 06-10-2017

In this blog, we describe the Evidence Map we developed for studies reporting on costs in cystic fibrosis that have been published since 2000.

We searched Heoro.com on 17th May 2017 using the following fields:

• Disease: Cystic Fibrosis
• AND: Study types: Costs and resource use studies
• AND: Costs and resource use: Direct costs OR Indirect costs
• AND: Publication date: 2000 to 2017

The search identified 60 abstracts. Of these, 58 reported direct costs from 11 countries and seven reported indirect costs from five countries.

Download a free copy of the Evidence Map here. To use the Map, open it in Microsoft Excel and enable macros.

The most common setting was the United States, wtih 15 abstracts, followed by the UK (13 abstracts), Australia (7 abstracts), Canada (6 abstracts), Germany and France (3 abstracts each), the Netherlands (2 abstracts) and Brazil, Denmark and New Zealand (1 abstract each). Nine studies were systematic reviews of the international literature.

Fourteen studies reported the costs of healthcare in general in individuals  with cystic fibrosis. Specific interventions studies included prenatal or neonatal screening (18 abstracts), antibiotics for respiratory infections (usually Pseudomonas, 11 abstracts), and rhDNAse and lung transplants with its associated treatments (4 abstracts each).

Twenty five abstracts were economic models and 24 were cost studies. 

As with many diseases, there is a relative lack of published data on indirect costs of cystic fibrosis, and two-thirds of studies reporting cost data were from just four jurisdictions: Australia, Canada, the UK and the USA.

Download a free copy of the Evidence Map here. To use the Map, open it in Microsoft Excel and enable macros.