Costs and cost-effectiveness of the nursing programme ‘Coping with itch’ for patients with chronic pruritic skin disease

Abstract

Most of the expenses associated with the 'Coping with itch' programme were incurred during the first 3 months, but the benefits in terms of days with little itch appeared to persist and increase beyond 3 months, thus leading to a more favourable incremental cost-effectiveness ratio.

Patient Education in Chronic Skin Diseases: A Systematic Review

“…Twenty-four of them were retained after filtering duplicates. After reading the remaining articles in full, four were excluded because their intervention was mainly non-educational (10)(11)(12)(13), five on the grounds of absence of a QoL outcome parameter (14)(15)(16)(17)(18), and a further five because they turned out to be non-randomised studies (19)(20)(21)(22)(23). Searching the references used in a systematic review on atopic dermatitis by Errser et al (24) yielded one additional publication (25).…”

British Association of Dermatologists’ guidelines for the investigation and management of generalized pruritus in adults without an underlying dermatosis, 2018

“…However, there have been a number of studies from a group looking at psychosocial nursing interventions in the management of pruritus (see section 7.9). One particular RCT looked at the health economic implications and found that most expenses were associated and incurred in the first 3 months of the programme . The benefits, with regard to days with little itch, increased beyond 3 months, thus leading to a favourable incremental and cost‐effectiveness ratio.…”

Educational interventions to improve quality of life in people with chronic inflammatory skin diseases: systematic reviews of clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness

“…The reasons for exclusion were: the nature of the intervention was not educational as defined within the scope of the project; [99][100][101][102] the study design was inappropriate; 75,93,103,104 the study was not published in English 105,106 (see Appendix 7). Three studies were eligible for inclusion; one was based on adults with chronic pruritic skin diseases 107 and the remaining two studies were on eczema in children. 108,109 In the study on pruritic skin disease, van Os-Medendorp and colleagues 107 assessed health-care costs and costs associated with loss of work in patients with different chronic pruritic skin diseases ( Table 23) enrolled in the nursing programme 'Coping with itch' compared with a control group of patients receiving usual dermatological care.…”

“…As a result, this study 107 is discussed in depth (see Description and results of the published economic evaluations); this is followed by discussion of the remaining two studies 108,109 that met the inclusion criteria. Characteristics of the three included studies [107][108][109] are shown in Table 23 and discussed in more detail subsequently. The identification process of the included studies is shown in a PRISMA flow chart presented in Figure 2.…”