The roles of magnetic resonance and endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (MRCP and ERCP) in the diagnosis of patients with suspected sclerosing cholangitis: a cost-effectiveness analysis
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND STUDY AIMS: The optimal approach for diagnosing sclerosing cholangitis remains unclear in the face of competing imaging technologies. We aimed to determine the most cost-effective strategy. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A decision model compared three approaches in the work-up of patients with suspected sclerosing cholangitis; all included an initial test, with, if unsuccessful, performance of a second cholangiographic method. They were magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP) and endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP), termed "MRCP_ERCP", ERCP and MRCP ("ERCP_MRCP"), or ERCP and a repeat ERCP ("ERCP_ERCP"). The implications of true and false positive and negative results with regard to costs and procedural complications were considered, including that of a liver biopsy, if indicated as a result of a negative work-up in the face of persistent clinical suspicion. The unit of effectiveness adopted was that of a correct diagnosis. Probability assumptions were derived from published literature, while cost estimates were derived from time-motion microanalyses or a national database, and expressed in Canadian dollars at 2004 values. Sensitivity analyses, including clinically relevant threshold analyses, were carried out. RESULTS: The average cost-effectiveness ratios were $414 for MRCP_ERCP, $1101 for ERCP_MRCP and $1123 for ERCP_ERCP, per correct diagnosis. The ERCP_MRCP strategy was dominated (more expensive and less effective) by MRCP_ERCP, while ERCP_ERCP was more effective and more costly than MRCP_ERCP, at $289,292 per additional correct diagnosis. Sensitivity and threshold analyses confirmed the robustness of these findings. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the model assumptions, a strategy of initial MRCP, followed, if negative, by ERCP is currently the most cost-effective approach to the work-up of patients with suspected sclerosing cholangitis.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 it