Current medical research and opinion
-
Objectives: To assess long-term (2-year) biologic treatment patterns of psoriatic arthritis (PsA) patients who initiated adalimumab, certolizumab pegol, etanercept, golimumab, or ustekinumab. Methods: Adult patients with ≥1 pharmacy or medical claim for injectable PsA biologics (index date) were identified from the Optum's Clinformatics Data Mart (1 January 2013-31 December 2016). Adherence, persistence, post-discontinuation treatment patterns, and addition of adjunctive medications were evaluated by index biologic. ⋯ Among patients who persisted with their index biologic for ≥90 days (n = 753), ≥1 adjunctive medication was added for 50.1% of patients. The most common adjunctive medications included corticosteroids (28.0% of patients), opioids (17.0%), nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) (13.8%), and conventional synthetic disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (csDMARDs) (7.3%). Conclusions: In this real-world study of use of biologic PsA therapies, 24-month persistence was low (19.7%), and treatment was frequently supplemented with adjunctive medications.
-
Objective: Human participants play an important role in medical care advances. Recruiting enough participants is perhaps the most significant procedure that determines the success of medical research, and high participation rate brings about many benefits. Therefore, acquiring enough participants is important for medical researchers. ⋯ Some factors affecting people's attitude toward participating in medical research have been identified and discussed in our review. Conclusion: This review demonstrated that willingness of participants to take part in medical research was influenced by a variety of factors. These factors may be used to predict the public's willingness to take part in medical research and may potentially be used in developing strategies aimed at improving participation rate.
-
Observational Study
Cost of cystectomy-related complications in patients with bladder cancer in the United States.
Aims: To describe healthcare utilization and cost associated with the short-term and long-term complications of cystectomy among commercially insured bladder cancer patients in the United States. Materials and methods: This retrospective, observational cohort study evaluated adults with bladder cancer receiving a transurethral resection of bladder tumor followed by a partial or radical cystectomy procedure using U. S. administrative claims from the 2005-2015 IBM MarketScan Commercial and Medicare Supplemental databases. ⋯ In the long-term period, PPPM complication-related healthcare costs were $544 [$2580] for partial cystectomy and $1619 [$7874] for radical cystectomy. Conclusions: Cystectomy-related complications, especially with radical cystectomy, present a substantial financial burden to patients and payers immediately after surgery as well as in the long term. Targeted interventions which improve clinical outcomes but reduce substantial costs associated with cystectomy for bladder cancer are needed.