Median-based incremental cost-effectiveness ratios with censored data

ABSTRACT

Cost-effectiveness is an essential part of treatment evaluation, in addition to effectiveness. In the cost-effectiveness analysis, a measure called the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) is widely utilized, and the mean cost and the mean (quality-adjusted) life years have served as norms to summarize cost and effectiveness for a study population. Recently, the median-based ICER was proposed for complementary or sensitivity analysis purposes. In this article, we extend this method when some data are censored.

KEYWORDS:

• Censoring
• cost-effectiveness analysis
• ICER
• median

Acknowledgments

The authors are very grateful to Dr. Alvin I. Mushlin, Dr. Arthur J. Moss, and Dr. Jack Zwanziger for making the cost data of MADITs I and II available to us. We thank Ms. Ya-Lin Chiu for programming advice.

Funding

This research was supported by R01 HL096575 from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. H. Bang was additionally supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), through grant #UL1 TR000002.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by R01 HL096575 from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. H. Bang was additionally supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), through grant #UL1 TR000002.