Cost-effectiveness of Anemia Screening in Vulnerable Groups: A Systematic Review.

BACKGROUND: Anemia is the most common blood disorder observed in vulnerable groups and affects their efficiency in their everyday activities. Possible complications of the disease may be reduced or prevented by screening of patients. Screening programs impose certain costs upon the health system, which may offset their positive effects. Whether the positive impacts of screening outweigh its costs is a subject of debate among policy-makers. In this research, we have conducted a systematic review of the cost-effectiveness of anemia screening. METHODS: The Pubmed, Science Direct, SCOPUS, EMBASE, and CINAHL databases were searched for relevant results dating between 1962-2010 using key words. The references of the related articles were gone over manually. In the end, Persian databases were also examined for results. RESULTS: Using data from the four mentioned databases, a total of 722 articles were elected, which, after evaluation, were narrowed down to 4. Of these, 3 focused on newborns and infants. Disparity existed among obtained results, such that no two articles were similar, and this made making comparisons between them cumbersome and sometimes even impossible. Only one study evaluated cost-effectiveness of anemia screening in vulnerable target groups. CONCLUSIONS: Research findings show that there is not enough evidence of cost-effectiveness of screening for decision-making. Bearing in mind the importance of the matter to health policy-makers, due to high prevalence of iron-deficiency anemia in low- and middle-income countries, conduction of research in this field seems necessary.

Cost-effectiveness of mammography screening for breast cancer in a low socioeconomic group of Iranian women.

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women. Mammography screening has been used in many countries to reduce early deaths caused by breast cancer. It is important to ensure that screening programs are effective and efficient. We conducted a study to assess the cost-effectiveness of a national breast cancer screening program implemented in Iran. METHODS: The perspective of the present study was the health system. Over 26,000 women aged 35 and higher, of low socioeconomic background were recruited from ten cities in the program. We used case-finding as the outcome indicator for assessing effectiveness of the program. We measured the service provision costs, the coordination costs and supervision costs of the program that included the staff costs, and measured cost per detected case. We also conducted sensitivity analyses and calculated false-positive rates as a result of the screening program. RESULTS: The total cost of breast cancer screening program was estimated at $377,797. The program resulted in the identification of 24 patients with breast cancers, not different from baseline expectations without a screening program. The cost per cancer detected was calculated $15,742. The minimum and maximum cost per breast cancer detected were about $13,524 and $16,947, respectively. We observed a false-positive rate of 7.5% among the target population. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that the mammography screening program was not cost-effective. Although there were technical efficiency issues in the conduct of the program, the findings do not support the implementation of national mammography screening programs in Iran in women aged less than 50 years. Careful studies of such programs for higher age groups are also recommended before they are rolled-out nationally.

Conservative treatment in early cervical cancer.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: The aim of this study was to describe fertility preservation methods to improve quality of life of early stages of cervical cancer. RECENT FINDING: Although definite treatment of early stages of cervical cancer including stages IA,IB1 and IIA non-bulky is radial hysterectomy, this method is used in perimenopousal period in which fertility preservation is not important. Whenever fertility preservation is so important, some methods like radical trachelectomy and laparoscopic lymphadenectomy are used to rule out lymphatic metastases. SUMMARY: If any visible lesion on cervix is found, pelvic MRI is helpful and during operation, trachelectomy samples are sent for frozen section and margin study. Radical trachelectomy is done vaginal or abdominal. Overall relapse rate of cervical cancer in radical trachelectomy and radical hysterectomy is the same. Complications of radical trachelectomy include chronic vaginal discharge, abnormal uterine bleeding, dysmenorrhea, inflammation and ulcer due to cercelage, amenorrhea, cervical stenosis and pregnancy complications following trachelectomy including 2(nd) trimester abortion and premature labor following cervical prematurity.The best and preferred method of labor is cesarean section. Neoadjuant chemotherapy followed by radical trachelectomy in large cervical lesions is a suitable treatment. Ultraconservative operations like large cold knife conization, simple trachelectomy with laparoscopic lymphadenectomy and sentinel lymph node mapping are suitable for very small lesions.

Breast cancer risk factors in a defined population: weighted logistic regression approach for rare events.

PURPOSE: This study aimed to determine out risk factors for female breast cancer in a low socioeconomic population in Iran. METHODS: Between 2007 and 2009, a total of 25,592 women who were ensured by the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation participated in this screening program. The characteristics of patients diagnosed with breast cancer (n=111) were compared with those of control cases (n=25,481). In this study, we used relogit analysis (rare event logistic regression) with a weighting method using program Zelig. RESULTS: Of 25,592 women, 3.9/1,000 had breast cancer, from which 38 were diagnosed during screening and 73 had already been diagnosed. The mean and standard deviation of age in breast cancer patients and in healthy controls were 49.18±8.86 years and 46.65±9.40 years, respectively. The findings based on the multivariate model revealed that the past history of ovarian cancer, hormone therapy, and first relatives with breast cancer were associated with increased risk for breast cancer. However, the use of oral contraceptive pills was found to be associated with reduced risk for breast cancer. CONCLUSION: Due to the rarity of the event in the population, relogit with a weighting method was used to investigate the major risk factors for breast cancer. These factors include oral contraceptive pill use, a history of ovarian cancer of the person under study, first relatives with breast cancer and hormone therapy.

Cost effectiveness of breast cancer screening using mammography; a systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is the leading cause of malignancy among women. Screening using mammography is proposed as an effective intervention for reducing early deaths due to breast cancer. We conducted a systematic review to assess the cost-effectiveness of such screening programs. We searched Medline, Scopus and Google Scholar and complemented it by other searches using sensitive search terms from 1993-2010. We screened the titles and abstracts, assessed the full texts of the remaining studies, and extracted data to a pre-designed data extraction sheet. Studies were categorized according to the age groups of the target population. We used narrative synthesis approaches for analyzing the data. Twenty-eight articles met the minimum inclusion criteria, mostly from high income settings. All studies used secondary data, and a variety of modeling techniques, age groups, screening intervals and outcome measures. Cost per life year gained, ranging from $1,634 (once at the age of 50 in India) to $65,000 (extending the lower age limit of screening to 40 Australian study), was the most commonly used outcome measure. Biennial screening test for those aged 50-70 years seems to be the most cost-effective option ($2685). Biennial screening for aged 50-70 years is the most cost-effective option among alternative scenarios. Screening those aged less than 50 is not recommended. Further studies in low-income and middle-income countries, and cost effectiveness studies along with randomized trials are required. To improve the comparability of the findings, future studies should include biennial screening in 50-70 age groups as an alternative strategy.

Prevalence and risk factors of reproductive tract infections among a defined population of Iranian women.

UNLABELLED: Background Reproductive tract infections are among the most prevalent gynaecological health concerns. The present study aimed to determine the prevalence and risk factors of reproductive tract infections among a defined population of Iranian women. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was performed in Shiraz, Southern Iran, from 2007 to 2009. The study subjects were 28?484 vulnerable household women who were covered by the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation insurance scheme. All the participants underwent vaginal speculum examinations and swab sampling. Vaginal discharge was collected for Gram staining, potassium hydroxide mount, wet mount and in a transport medium for culture and sensitivity testing. The frequency of reproductive tract infections and their risk factors were determined. RESULTS: The mean age of the 28?484 women who participated in the study was 48.7±10.1 (range: 13-104) years. According to the results, 13?472 (47.3%) subjects had reproductive tract infections. Moreover, vulvovaginal candidiasis was the most common infection in our population, accounting for 4718 subjects (16.6%), followed by trichomoniasis (11.2%) and bacterial vaginosis (10.6%). Furthermore, the number of pregnancies, being married and low educational levels (illiterate and under diploma level) were the risk factors for these infections, whereas the use of oral contraceptives and being employed were the protective factors. CONCLUSION: Almost half of the vulnerable Iranian women suffer from reproductive tract infections, with candidiasis and trichomoniasis being the most prevalent types. Based on the high prevalence of these infections, appropriate and precise screening programs should be taken into consideration for this specific population.

Fertility sparing treatments in young patients with gynecological cancers: Iranian experience and literature review.

With increase in the marriage age some women experience gynecological cancers before giving birth. Thus fertility sparing in these patients is an important point and much work has been done on conservative management. We here report our experience on fertility sparing with cervical, endometrial and ovarian cancers and include a review of the literature. With cervical cancer, radical trachelectomy with para-aortic and pelvic lymphadenectomy can be performed in patients with early stage IA1-IB cancers, because they have low recurrence rates. The complications are fewer than with radical hysterectomy. For endometrial cancer, the accepted treatment is total abdominal hysterectomy+bilateral salpango-oopherectomy (TAH+BSO), but in young patients with early stage 1 lesions, we can suggest use of hormonal therapy in place of radical surgery if we evaluate with MRI and the result is early stage disease without the other site involvement and the grade of tumor is well differentiated. GNRH analog, oral medroxyprogestrone acetate (MPA), 100-800 mg/day, megestrol acetate 40-160 mg/day and combination of tamoxifen and a progestin have been applied, but we must remember, they should underwent repeated curettage for investigating medical outcome after 3 months. With normal pathology we follow medical therapy for 3 months and can evaluate for infertility treatment. The best option for patients who treated by medical therapy is TAH+BSO after normal term pregnancy. With ovarian cancer, there is much experience on fertility sparing surgery and in Iran conservative surgical management in young patients with stage I (grade 1,2) of epithelial ovarian tumor and sex cord-stromal tumor and patients with borderline and germ cell ovarian tumors is being successfully performed.

Epidemiology of major depressive disorder in iran: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVES: There are a large number of primary researches on the prevalence of major depressive disorder (MDD) in Iran; however, their findings are varied considerably. A systematic review was performed in order to summarize the findings. METHODS: Electronic and manual searches in international and Iranian journals were conducted to find relevant studies reporting MDD prevalence. To maximize the sensitivity of the search, the references of relevant papers were also explored. We explored the potential sources of heterogeneity such as diagnostic tools, gender and other characteristics using meta-regression model. The combined mean prevalence rates were calculated for genders, studies using each type of instruments and for each province using meta-analysis method. RESULTS: From 44 articles included in the systematic review, 24 reported current prevalence and 20 reported lifetime prevalence of MDD. The overall estimation of current prevalence of MDD was 4.1% (95% CI: 3.1-5.1). Women were 1.95 (95% CI: 1.55-2.45) times more likely to have MDD. The current prevalence of MDD in urban inhabitants was not significantly different from rural inhabitants. The analysis identified the variations in diagnostic tools as an important source of heterogeneity. CONCLUSIONS: Although there is not adequate information on MDD prevalence in some areas of Iran, the overall current prevalence of MDD in the country is high and females are at the greater risk of disease.