EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Cost-Effective Use of Silver Dressings for the Treatment of Hard-to-Heal Chronic Venous Leg Ulcers

Gregor B E Jemec, Jean Charles Kerihuel, Karen Ousey, Sanne Lise Lauemøller and David John Leaper

PLOS ONE, 2014, vol. 9, issue 6, 1-6

Abstract: Aim: To estimate the cost-effectiveness of silver dressings using a health economic model based on time-to-wound-healing in hard-to-heal chronic venous leg ulcers (VLUs). Background: Chronic venous ulceration affects 1–3% of the adult population and typically has a protracted course of healing, resulting in considerable costs to the healthcare system. The pathogenesis of VLUs includes excessive and prolonged inflammation which is often related to critical colonisation and early infection. The use of silver dressings to control this bioburden and improve wound healing rates remains controversial. Methods: A decision tree was constructed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of treatment with silver compared with non-silver dressings for four weeks in a primary care setting. The outcomes: ‘Healed ulcer’, ‘Healing ulcer’ or ‘No improvement’ were developed, reflecting the relative reduction in ulcer area from baseline to four weeks of treatment. A data set from a recent meta-analysis, based on four RCTs, was applied to the model. Results: Treatment with silver dressings for an initial four weeks was found to give a total cost saving (£141.57) compared with treatment with non-silver dressings. In addition, patients treated with silver dressings had a faster wound closure compared with those who had been treated with non-silver dressings. Conclusion: The use of silver dressings improves healing time and can lead to overall cost savings. These results can be used to guide healthcare decision makers in evaluating the economic aspects of treatment with silver dressings in hard-to-heal chronic VLUs.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0100582 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.13 ... 00582&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0100582

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0100582

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().

 
Page updated 2025-05-05
Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0100582