Abstract
Costs associated with treatment of traumatic injuries and orthopaedic deformities of long bones are high and their assessment is complex. Cost analysis includes clinical outcomes (such as survival, rates of union or nonunion, and short-term morbidity) and functional outcomes (e.g., lost wages, quality of life, return to work, and emotional well-being). Cost analysis must also distinguish between direct costs (associated with all aspects of treatment) and indirect costs (associated with lost productivity).
Analysis of the costs associated with treatment by means of hexapod external fixators is further complicated by the fact that researches often involve comparative studies with other external or internal fixation systems, and evaluations of concomitant use of other kinds of therapy, or consider the use of combination of both external and internal fixation.
Other factors to be considered are release date of scientific publications on this topic, country and currency considered, age of patients studied, kind of condition examined and of skeletal site involved, occurrence of complications, treatment performed, and kind of hexapod external fixator used.
The learning curve is generally rapid, and the cost of surgery with hexapod frames does not depend on the procedure length, but is related to price of device.
It should be pointed out that hexapod fixators have many advantages on the other devices, namely higher strength and stability, better handling and simplicity of use, by relying on the associated software. A reduction of costs of hexapod fixation devices, due to their gradual spreading, can be expected, with a decrease of indirect costs that represent the most important component of total costs.
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Abbreviations
- CT:
-
computed tomography scan
- LMICs:
-
low-middle income countries
- TSF:
-
Taylor Spatial Frame
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Mora, R., Pedrotti, L., Maccabruni, A., Bertani, B., Tuvo, G. (2021). Economic Burden and Practical Considerations. In: Massobrio, M., Mora, R. (eds) Hexapod External Fixator Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40667-7_15
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