Economic Evaluations of Childhood Hearing Loss Screening Programmes: A Systematic Review and Critique

Rajan Sharma (), Yuanyuan Gu, Teresa Y. C. Ching, Vivienne Marnane and Bonny Parkinson
Additional contact information
Rajan Sharma: Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy
Teresa Y. C. Ching: Australian Hearing Hub
Vivienne Marnane: Australian Hearing Hub

Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, 2019, vol. 17, issue 3, No 6, 357 pages

Abstract: Abstract Background Permanent childhood hearing loss is one of the most common birth conditions associated with speech and language delay. A hearing screening can result in early detection and intervention for hearing loss. Objectives To update and expand previous systematic reviews of economic evaluations of childhood hearing screening strategies, and explore the methodological differences. Data Sources MEDLINE, Embase, the Cochrane database, National Health Services Economic Evaluation Database (NHS EED), the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) database, and Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health’s (CADTH) Grey matters. Study Eligibility Criteria, Participants and Interventions Economic evaluations reporting costs and outcomes for both the intervention and comparator arms related to childhood hearing screening strategies. Results Thirty evaluations (from 29 articles) were included for review. Several methodological issues were identified, including: few evaluations reported outcomes in terms of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs); none estimated utilities directly from surveying children; none included disutilities and costs associated with adverse events; few included costs and outcomes that differed by severity; few included long-term estimates; none considered acquired hearing loss; some did not present incremental results; and few conducted comprehensive univariate or probabilistic sensitivity analysis. Evaluations published post-2011 were more likely to report QALYs and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) as outcome measures, include long-term treatment and productivity costs, and present incremental results. Limitations We were unable to access the economic models and, although we employed an extensive search strategy, potentially not all relevant economic evaluations were identified. Conclusions and Implications Most economic evaluations concluded that childhood hearing screening is value for money. However, there were significant methodological limitations with the evaluations.

Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40258-018-00456-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:aphecp:v:17:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s40258-018-00456-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40258

DOI: 10.1007/s40258-018-00456-1

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Health Economics and Health Policy is currently edited by Timothy Wrightson

More articles in Applied Health Economics and Health Policy from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().