Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Text Messaging to Support Health Advice for Smoking Cessation

Background: Smoking in one of the most serious public health problems. It is well known that it constitutes a major risk factor for chronic diseases and the leading cause of preventable death worldwide. Due to high prevalence of smokers, new cost-effective strategies seeking to increase smoking cessation rates are needed. Methods: We performed a Markov model-based cost-effectiveness analysis comparing two treatments: health advice provided by general practitioners and nurses in primary care, and health advice reinforced by sending motivational text messages to smokers' mobile phones. A Markov model was used in which smokers transitioned between three mutually exclusive health states (smoker, former smoker and dead) after 6-month cycles. We calculated the cost-effectiveness ratio associated with the sending of motivational messages. Health care and society perspectives (separately) was adopted. Costs taken into account were direct health care costs and direct health care cost and costs for lost productivity, respectively. Additionally, deterministic sensitivity analysis was performed modifying the probability of smoking cessation with each option. Results: Sending of text messages as a tool to support health advice was found to be cost-effective as it was associated with increases in costs of euro7.4 and euro1,327 per QALY gained (ICUR) for men and women respectively from a healthcare perspective, significantly far from the published cost-effectiveness threshold. From a societal perspective, the combined programmed was dominant. Conclusions: Sending text messages is a cost-effective approach. These findings support the implantation of the combined program across primary care health centresThis paper has been co-funded by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and by the European Social Fund (ESF). Call for proposals: Accion Estrategica en Salud 2017. Reference number PI17/01502

Adiciones y revisiones al Atlas de la flora vascular silvestre de Burgos, VIII

Se mencionan 44 táxones con citas y comentarios referidos a su existencia en la provincia de Burgos. De ellos 3 suponen una novedad para el catálogo provincial.44 Taxa with either quotations or remarks, related to their existence within the province of Burgos, are mentioned. 3 out of these aforementioned ones mean a novelty value for the provincial catalogue

Path analysis regression weights of burnout on mental health subindices.

Path analysis regression weights of burnout on mental health subindices.</p

Marital status differences in burnout and mental health scores.

The degrees of freedom are adjusted by means of the Leven test of homoscedasticity. (XLSX)</p