<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Background: Surgical care is often regarded as too expensive and complex for people in poor countries and so has long been neglected.Objective: We demonstrated that the cost per disability-adjusted life year (DALY) saved of reconstructive surgery in Cambodia is competitive with many basic public health interventions.Methods: The Children’s Surgical Centre (CSC) in Phnom Penh provides orthopedic, plastic, ophthalmological, and general reconstructive surgical services free to disabled people in Cambodia. Following standard guidelines for calculating operation costs and assigning disability weights we calculated the cost effectiveness of surgical treatment for 343 patients treated at CSC in January and March, 2012.Results: Our data for these two months yielded 1785 DALYs averted and operating costs totaling $164,543; resulting in $99 per DALY averted.Conclusion: Reconstructive surgery is cost effective compared to other basic public health interventions and should not be neglected when designing integrated health care services in a developing country.</abstract>

Background: Surgical care is often regarded as too expensive and complex for people in poor countries and so has long been neglected.Objective: We demonstrated that the cost per disability-adjusted life year (DALY) saved of reconstructive surgery in Cambodia is competitive with many basic public health interventions.Methods: The Children’s Surgical Centre (CSC) in Phnom Penh provides orthopedic, plastic, ophthalmological, and general reconstructive surgical services free to disabled people in Cambodia. Following standard guidelines for calculating operation costs and assigning disability weights we calculated the cost effectiveness of surgical treatment for 343 patients treated at CSC in January and March, 2012.Results: Our data for these two months yielded 1785 DALYs averted and operating costs totaling $164,543; resulting in $99 per DALY averted.Conclusion: Reconstructive surgery is cost effective compared to other basic public health interventions and should not be neglected when designing integrated health care services in a developing country.

The cost effectiveness of reconstructive surgery in Cambodia

Children’s Surgical Centre, Kien Khleang National Rehabilitation Center, Phnom Penh,

Asian Biomedicine

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

{"article-title":"The cost effectiveness of reconstructive surgery in Cambodia"}

Background: Surgical care is often regarded as too expensive and complex for people in poor countries and so has long been neglected.Objective: We demonstrated...

The cost effectiveness of reconstructive surgery in Cambodia

Article Category: Original article

Pubblicato online: 04 feb 2017

Pagine: 319 - 324

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5372/1905-7415.0703.182

© 2017

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.