A research team in the Department of Physiotherapy, Podiatry, Prosthetics, and Orthotics at La Trobe University are conducting a pilot study using patient-reported outcomes to quantify the cost-effectiveness and cost-utility of passive suction versus vacuum-assisted suction suspension for transtibial prosthesis users.
Health economic evaluations provide cost-benefit evidence to inform policy and investment decisions. However, there are methodological challenges to conducting the evaluations in prosthetics because the benefit measures do not focus on the things most important to prosthesis users and funders, the researchers noted, and the time horizons are long. A time horizon refers to the length of time from an investment until a specific goal is achieved.
To address those challenges, the pilot study will use patient-reported outcome measures and the Synthetic Cohort Method, a technique used in epidemiological modelling of lifetime risks. Each intervention will include three subgroups representing prosthesis users in the first, second, or third year of the intervention since fitting. A prosthetic payer perspective will be taken, with data collected over a one-year period and synthesized to reflect the costs and benefits over three years.
The open-access paper, “Health economic evaluation of trans-tibial prosthetic suspension systems: A protocol for a pilot using an observational study and synthetic cohort,” was published in Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation.
