• DOI:10.2174/1389201020666190717095443
• Corpus ID: 197664630

Systematic review of economic evaluation studies of drug-based non-malignant chronic pain treatment.

@article{Backhaus2019SystematicRO,
  title={Systematic review of economic evaluation studies of drug-based non-malignant chronic pain treatment.},
  author={Insa Backhaus and Alice Mannocci and Giuseppe La Torre},
  journal={Current pharmaceutical biotechnology},
  year={2019}
}

• I. Backhaus, A. Mannocci, G. La Torre
• Published 31 August 2019
• Medicine
• Current pharmaceutical biotechnology

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE
Chronic pain is a highly prevalent problem, involving high costs and seriously affecting a patient's quality of life. This review aimed to systematically review economic evaluations of pharmacological-based treatments for non-malignant chronic pain and to compare different treatment approaches with regard to their economic profile.

METHODS
PubMed and Scopus were systematically searched in April 2016. Studies were included if quality-adjusted life years and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios were reported. Quality assessment was carried out by using La Torre's weighted scale on the Drummond checklist. Costs were converted into US$2014.

RESULTS
Fourteen economic evaluations met the inclusion criteria. Three treatment categories identified were: opioids, anticonvulsants, and anti-depressants. Compared to anticonvulsants and anti-depressant opioids compared had lower ICER. Transdermal buprenorphine showed an ICER of about US$11,000.00 while pregabalin showed ICER of roughly US$19,200 this is not rough at all and not ICERs but ICER. Studies included showed a diversity of methodological approaches, such as different modeling approaches and different perspectives (NHS and private payer).

CONCLUSION
There are limitations to the success of making appropriate recommendations about which treatment is most cost-effective due to great variability between treatments, pain syndromes, and drug dosages. To ensure correct resource allocation as well the best benefit for patients, uniform and standardized approaches of cost and outcome measurement in economic evaluations of chronic are needed.