Measuring costs and consequences in economic evaluation in asthma.

Formal economic evaluation is playing an increasingly important role in health-care decision-making. This is shown by the requirement to present economic data to support applications for public reimbursement for new pharmaceuticals in Australia and the provinces of Canada, and by the appraisal process initiated by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence in the U.K. This growing role of economic analysis applies as much to the field of asthma as anywhere. This paper provides a detailed review of applied economic studies in asthma. The review is used to explore a range of methodological issues in the field including the choice of perspective and maximand, whether to use disease-specific or generic measures of outcome and whether decision-makers should receive disaggregated cost and consequence data or results that focus on an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio. It is concluded that, given the heterogeneity in decision-makers' objectives and constraints, economic studies should be planned and executed in such a way as to maximize flexibility in how results are presented.