Unfortunately, there is no rapid and reliable test to determine, who is infected. Also, not all women who are infected at the time of birth pass the infection to their newborns. Decision analysis estimates the probability of each event that is important to deciding how to treat the mother. For example, the researcher first estimates the probability that the mother is infected and then the probability that she will pass the infection on to her baby. These calculations are complicated because the more rapid tests for infection are not perfectly accurate and some highly accurate tests take days to produce a result.
Costs also have to be calculated.
In addition to the immediate cost of screening and treatment for the mother and baby, researchers calculated lifetime consequences of infectiorn such as death or dimished earnings due to retardation. Costs of antibiotic overuse include the development of drug-resistant strains of the disease or rare drug reactions. Three strategies do the best jobs of preventing infant infections, limiting the number of mothers treated with antibiotics and reduce total cost. Recognizing,, the fact that their models are affected by factors that cannot be quantified at this time, the authors suggest that data be collected prospectively to determine actual as opposed to probable outcomes. This document is also available in WordPerfect6.1 Windows format as a DOS zip file.