While we found relatively good st and ards of reporting the study ’s question , population , interventions , comparators and conclusions , the overall reporting was poor , and evidence of unfamiliarity with international guidelines was evident ( i.e. absence of incremental analysis , of discounting long-term costs and effects ) .
Analysis or description of place-to-place variability was infrequent .
Use and acceptance of health economic evaluations ( HEEs ) has been much greater in developed than in developing nations .
Nevertheless , while developing countries lag behind in the development of HEE methods , they could benefit from the progress made in other countries and concentrate on ways in which existing methods can be used or would need to be modified to fulfill their specific needs .
HEEs , as context -specific tools , are not easily generalizable from setting to setting .
Existing studies regarding generalizability and transferability of HEEs have primarily been conducted in developed countries .
Therefore , a legitimate question for policy makers in Latin America and the Caribbean region ( LAC ) is to what extent HEEs conducted in industrialized economies and in LAC are generalizable to LAC ( trans-regional ) and to other LAC countries ( intra-regional ) , respectively .
[Advantages of video assisted thoracic surgery in the treatment of spontaneous pneumothorax].
Spontaneous pneumothorax ( SP ) is a disabling condition mostly affecting young , thin and otherwise healthy males . It is usually caused by ruptured pleural blebs . The first treatment is the insertion of a chest tube ( ICT ) but in a great number of patients there is recurrence of the disease . We believe that the video assisted thoracoscopy ( VATS ) is the best treatment possible because it allows us to treat the ruptured bleb radically avoiding any recurrence . In order to prove it , 40 patients admitted in a five-year period , with a SP , were r and omly assigned to be treated by ICT or VATS . The ICT patients were in the hospital a mean time of 7.5 ( 4 to 15 ) days and the VATS patients , 5.3 ( 2 to 7 ) days ( P < .05 ) . ICT patients required analgesic drugs during 76.8 + /- 31 hours and VATS patients 38.4 + /- 13 hours ( p < .05 ) . From the ICT group , 8 ( 53 % ) patients had recurrence of the disease and 6 ( 40 % ) had a prolonged air leak , while none of the patients of the VATS group had any complication ( < .001 ) . Cost of ICT and VATS  were $ 850 and $ 1730 , respectively . According to these results , VATS should be the treatment of choice in SP patients . It treats the cause of the disease . It also reduces the hospitalization time , the use of analgesic drugs post surgery , decreases recurrence of the disease and the cost of the treatment . Moreover , the patients were back to work in less than 10 days
While we found relatively good st and ards of reporting the study ’s question , population , interventions , comparators and conclusions , the overall reporting was poor , and evidence of unfamiliarity with international guidelines was evident ( i.e. absence of incremental analysis , of discounting long-term costs and effects ) .
Analysis or description of place-to-place variability was infrequent .
Use and acceptance of health economic evaluations ( HEEs ) has been much greater in developed than in developing nations .
Nevertheless , while developing countries lag behind in the development of HEE methods , they could benefit from the progress made in other countries and concentrate on ways in which existing methods can be used or would need to be modified to fulfill their specific needs .
HEEs , as context -specific tools , are not easily generalizable from setting to setting .
Existing studies regarding generalizability and transferability of HEEs have primarily been conducted in developed countries .
Therefore , a legitimate question for policy makers in Latin America and the Caribbean region ( LAC ) is to what extent HEEs conducted in industrialized economies and in LAC are generalizable to LAC ( trans-regional ) and to other LAC countries ( intra-regional ) , respectively .