Ungar Wendy J, Santos Maria T
Department of Population Health Sciences, Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Med Care. 2003 Oct;41(10):1142-52. doi: 10.1097/01.MLR.0000088451.56688.65.
While standard methods for conducting economic evaluations have evolved, little attention has been paid to the conduct of these studies in special populations such as children.
To build a database of pediatric economic evaluations and to examine trends in publication characteristics over a 20-year period.
The database was created through a multisource search strategy, manual review, application of inclusion/exclusion criteria, data extraction, and reliability assessment. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize trends in publication volume, disease category, intervention type, and age group between 1980 and 1999.
From an initial cut of 5600 citations identified from 12 journal databases, 787 were included as full pediatric economic evaluations. Volume of publications increased 7-fold between 1980 to 1984 and 1995 to 1999 from 61 to 440 citations per 5-year period. Most studies were performed in children aged 1 to 12 years, and studies in infants displayed an increasing frequency. The most common disease category was infective/parasitic, comprising 24% of studies. Studies of congenital anomalies and complications of pregnancy were also prominent. Although health prevention studies were the most prevalent, health treatment studies demonstrated an equal frequency in 1995 to 1999. Most studies consisted of malaria control and vaccination strategies for hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type B, measles, and varicella.
The number of pediatric economic evaluations is steadily increasing with most publications representing health prevention interventions. The Pediatric Economic Database Evaluation (PEDE) Project database will be valuable to health researchers working in methods research and conducting systematic reviews.
虽然进行经济评估的标准方法已经有所发展，但对于在儿童等特殊人群中开展这些研究却很少受到关注。
建立一个儿科经济评估数据库，并研究20年期间出版物特征的趋势。
通过多源搜索策略、人工审查、应用纳入/排除标准、数据提取和可靠性评估来创建数据库。使用描述性统计来总结1980年至1999年期间出版物数量、疾病类别、干预类型和年龄组的趋势。
从12个期刊数据库中最初筛选出的5600条引用文献中，787篇被纳入为完整的儿科经济评估。1980年至1984年与1995年至1999年期间，出版物数量从每5年61篇引用文献增加到440篇，增长了7倍。大多数研究针对1至12岁的儿童进行，针对婴儿的研究频率呈上升趋势。最常见的疾病类别是感染性/寄生虫性疾病，占研究的24%。先天性异常和妊娠并发症的研究也很突出。虽然健康预防研究最为普遍，但健康治疗研究在1995年至1999年期间频率相当。大多数研究包括疟疾控制以及针对乙型肝炎、B型流感嗜血杆菌、麻疹和水痘的疫苗接种策略。
儿科经济评估的数量在稳步增加，大多数出版物代表健康预防干预措施。儿科经济数据库评估（PEDE）项目数据库对于从事方法研究和进行系统评价的健康研究人员将具有重要价值。
