The quality of economic studies in respiratory diseases in China by QHES tool

Article type
Authors
Zhuo M1, Zhao L1, He Y1, Zhang X1, Liu F1, Jiang H1, Tian JH2
1Evidence-Based Medicine Center, School of Basic Medical Sciences of Lanzhou University, China
2School of Public Health of Lanzhou University, China
Abstract
Background: Economic studies(ESs) are increasingly common in the respiratory diseases. Although clinical trials are subjected routinely to critical appraisal, there has been no attempt to appraise the quality of ECs in this field.

Objective: To assess the quality of ESs in respiratory diseases, and to identify predictors of study quality.

Methods: An electronic literature search of all ESs of respiratory diseases from inception to December 2012 was conducted using the following text and keywords in combination both MeSH terms and text words, the search strategy was (cost OR cost effective OR cost benefit OR cost utility) AND (respiratory diseases) in four databases. The methodological quality was assessed independently by two reviewers using the the Quality of Health Economic Studies (QHES).

Results: Of 77 ESs were included and analyzed, there were not high quality, 96.10% were fair, and 3.90% were poor. Compared with before 2003, the number of articles is significantly increasing, but the quality was not improved. Compared with the foreign ECs, the score of Chinese ESs (Mean ± SD:62.51 ± 5.96) was lower (Table 1, 2).

Conclusions: There is not ESs in respiratory diseases meet criteria for high quality. QHES is a validated instrument to appraise the quality of health economic analyses. In the future, the journal editors and peer reviewers should pay more attention to the quality of ESs in reparatory diseases.