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| 2. |
- Jönsson, Linus, et al.
(författare)
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Determinants of costs of care for patients with Alzheimer's disease
- 2006
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Ingår i: International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. - : Wiley. - 0885-6230 .- 1099-1166. ; 21:5, s. 449-459
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BACKGROUND: Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common cause of dementia, is a major cause of disability and care burden in the elderly. This study aims to estimate the costs of formal and informal care and identity determinants of care costs. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Two hundred and seventy-two (AD) patients and their caregivers were recruited among patients attending regular visits at six memory clinic in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. Patients with a diagnosis of AD and with an identifiable primary caregiver were eligible for inclusion. Data was collected by questionnaires at baseline, and at scheduled follow-up visits after 6 months and again after 12 months. Cognitive function was assessed with the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) and behavioural disturbances were measured using a brief version of the neuropsychiatric inventory (NPI). RESULTS: Total annual costs were on average 172,000 SEK, ranging from 60,700 SEK in mild dementia to 375,000 SEK in severe dementia. Costs for community care (special accommodation, home help, etc.) constituted about half of total costs of care and increase sharply with increasing cognitive impairment. Informal care costs, valued at the opportunity cost of the caregiver's time, make up about a third of total costs and also increased significantly with disease severity. Medical care costs (inpatient care, outpatient care, pharmaceuticals), on the other hand, were not significantly related to disease severity. Regression analysis confirmed a strong association between costs and cognitive function, between patients as well as within patients over time. There was also a significant influence on costs from behavioural disturbances. Sensitivity analysis showed that the method chosen to value informal care can have considerable impact on results. CONCLUSIONS: Costs of care in patient with AD are high and related to dementia severity as well as presence of behavioural disturbances. The cost estimates presented have implications for future economic evaluation of treatments for Alzheimer's disease.
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| 3. |
- Jönsson, Linus, et al.
(författare)
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Patient- and proxy-reported utility in Alzheimer disease using the EuroQoL
- 2006
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Ingår i: Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders. - : Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health). - 0893-0341 .- 1546-4156. ; 20:1, s. 49-55
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study aims to compare patient- and proxy-rated utilities and health-related quality of life from individuals in different stages of Alzheimer disease (AD). Two hundred seventy-two patients and their primary caregivers were enrolled in a prospective observational study and underwent three consecutive interviews, 6 months apart. Average Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores were 19.3, 18.0, and 16.4 at the three interviews; scores ranged from 0 to 30. Using the EuroQoL EQ-5D instrument, patient-rated health utilities were on average 0.833 with little variation across MMSE-based severity levels. Proxy-rated health utilities were 0.69 (MMSE >25), 0.64 (MMSE 21-25), 0.50 (MMSE 15-20), 0.49 (MMSE 10-14), and 0.33 (MMSE <10). Proxy-rated utilities, as well as changes in utilities over time, were significantly related to MMSE scores and inversely related to scores on a brief version of the neuropsychiatric inventory (NPI) and institutionalization. Utilities were highly correlated with the disease-specific quality of life instrument QoL-AD. The study shows that the EuroQoL can be used to rate utilities in Alzheimer disease, but there are important differences between patient- and proxy-ratings.
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| 4. |
- Lindgren, Peter, et al.
(författare)
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Association between achieving treatment goals for lipid-lowering and cardiovascular events in real clinical practice
- 2005
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Ingår i: European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention & Rehabilitation. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1741-8267 .- 1741-8275. ; 12:6, s. 530-534
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BACKGROUND: There is substantial evidence that treatment with lipid-lowering agents can decrease cardiovascular morbidity and total mortality in patients with elevated serum lipid values and/or prior ischaemic heart disease. However, only a minority of these high-risk patients are believed to receive treatment, and among those who do receive pharmaceutical treatment the majority do not reach the therapeutic goal. Our goal was to investigate if this translates to a higher risk of cardiovascular events in real clinical practice. DESIGN: A retrospective cohort study using linkage of electronic medical records, the Swedish national inpatient registry and cause of death registry was performed, enrolling a total of 4976 patients who received treatment with a lipid-lowering agent at any time between 1 January 1993 and 1 December 2001. METHODS: Cox proportional hazards regression was used to evaluate the impact of goal attainment along with potential confounding factors. RESULTS: Patients who reached treatment goals were 24% less likely to suffer a cardiovascular event (relative risk: 0.76, 95% confidence interval: 0.60-0.96) than patients who did not reach treatment goals. A substantial proportion of patients treated with lipid-lowering agents do not achieve the treatment goals. CONCLUSIONS: Failure to reach treatment goals translates into a higher risk of cardiovascular events, and it is thus of importance to ensure that patients reach goals.
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| 5. |
- Lundkvist, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Cost-effectiveness of exemestane versus tamoxifen as adjuvant therapy for early-stage breast cancer after 2-3 years treatment with tamoxifen in Sweden.
- 2007
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Ingår i: Breast cancer research and treatment. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0167-6806 .- 1573-7217. ; 102:3, s. 289-99
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aromatase inhibitors are rapidly becoming the cornerstone of endocrine treatment for advanced disease and are now also used as adjuvant treatment in early-stage disease. The objective of this study was to assess the cost-effectiveness of adjuvant treatment with exemestane versus tamoxifen for early-stage breast cancer after 2-3 years treatment with tamoxifen in Sweden.The results are based on findings in the Intergroup Exemestane Study (IES). IES was a randomized controlled trial in which postmenopausal women who had received 2-3 years of tamoxifen therapy following primary treatment of early-stage breast cancer, were randomized to either continue on tamoxifen therapy or be switched to exemestane therapy. The results showed a disease-free survival hazard ratio of exemestane relative to tamoxifen in IES of 0.69. A Markov state-transition model was developed to simulate consequences after the end of the clinical trial, and to integrate the trial data with external data on mortality, costs and quality of life specific for Swedish women.The cost per QALY gained was about euro 20,000 in the base case analysis without inclusion of consequences of coronary heart disease. Inclusion of these events increased the cost-effectiveness ratio to about euro 31,000. This means that, based on our assumption, sequential exemestane treatment in early breast cancer is a cost-effective option compared with tamoxifen alone, although more long-term data on overall survival and consequences of adverse events would be valuable to increase the validity of the analysis further.
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| 6. |
- Sellberg, Linus, et al.
(författare)
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Using Random Indexing to improve Singular Value Decomposition for Latent Semantic Analysis
- 2008
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'08). - Marrakech, Morocco : European Language Resources Association.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper we present results from using Random indexing for Latent Semantic Analysis to handle Singular Value Decomposition tractability issues. In the paper we compare Latent Semantic Analysis, Random Indexing and Latent Semantic Analysis on Random Indexing reduced matrices. Our results show that Latent Semantic Analysis on Random Indexing reduced matrices provide better results on Precision and Recall than Random Indexing only. Furthermore, computation time for Singular Value Decomposition on a Random indexing reduced matrix is almost halved compared to Latent Semantic Analysis.
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