Cost-Effectiveness Analysis Parallel to a Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Vertical Scar Reduction and Inverted T–Shaped Reduction Mammaplasty
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: A previous randomized controlled trial showed no clear superiority of vertical scar over inverted T-shaped reduction mammaplasty in terms of health-related quality of life. No economic evaluation has been undertaken comparing vertical scar reduction and inverted T -shaped reduction. METHODS: A total of 255 patients were randomized to either vertical scar or inverted T -shaped reduction. The effectiveness was measured with the Health Utilities Index Mark 3. Direct and productivity costs were captured parallel to the randomized controlled trial. Perspectives of the Ministry of Health, patient, and society were considered. RESULTS: Inverted T -shaped reduction dominated vertical scar reduction from the Ministry of Health perspective by being slightly less costly ($3090.06 versus $3106.58) and slightly more effective (0.87 quality-adjusted life-years versus 0.86 quality-adjusted life-years). From the societal and patient perspectives, vertical scar reduction was both less costly and less effective. At the commonly quoted Canadian threshold of $50,000 per quality-adjusted life-year gained, the probability that vertical scar reduction was cost-effective was 29.3, 68.2, and 66.9 percent from the Ministry of Health, patient, and societal perspectives. Subgroup analysis of reductions less than 500 g found that vertical scar reduction was more likely cost-effective. CONCLUSIONS: Vertical scar reduction is more likely than not cost-effective from patient and societal perspectives but not from the Ministry of Health perspective at a willingness-to-pay threshold of $50,000 per quality-adjusted life-year. If we limit vertical scar reduction for resections less than 500 g per breast, this technique is more likely cost-effective from all perspectives.
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 | 0.008 | 0.023 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.010 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.020 | 0.001 |
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".