Cost Comparison of Linezolid Versus Vancomycin for Treatment of Complicated Skin and Skin‐Structure Infection Caused by Methicillin‐Resistant <i>Staphylococcus aureus</i> in Quebec
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: In Canada, complicated skin and skin-structure infection (cSSSI) caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is usually treated with antibiotics in hospital, with a follow-up course at home for stable patients. The cost implications of using intravenous and oral linezolid instead of intravenous vancomycin in Canadian clinical practice have not been examined. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the potential treatment cost impact for the Quebec health care system of linezolid versus vancomycin for MRSA-related cSSSI therapy, using a net impact analysis approach. METHODS: Health care resource use associated with linezolid and vancomycin therapy was estimated for patients in Quebec, based on expert opinion. Costs were assigned to health care resources (antibiotics, medical supplies, laboratory testing and health care professional time) based on unit prices. The base-case analysis assumed 14 days of antibiotic treatment for both agents; five days in hospital followed by nine days at home. Therapy duration, length of inpatient treatment and discharge rates were varied in sensitivity analyses. RESULTS: Antibiotic costs were higher for linezolid than for vancomycin, for both inpatient ($874 versus $144, respectively) and outpatient therapy ($1,356 versus $1,242, respectively). Compared with vancomycin, lower costs for antibiotic preparation, administration and monitoring of linezolid offset drug acquisition costs. Total treatment costs were $3,850 for linezolid versus $5,189 for vancomycin. Results were sensitive to the number of treatment days spent at home and the discharge rate. CONCLUSION: Using linezolid instead of vancomycin to treat MRSA-related cSSSI, for hospital and home courses combined, may reduce health care resource utilization and costs in Quebec.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".