A global, regional, and national survey on burden and Quality of Care Index (QCI) of brain and other central nervous system cancers; global burden of disease systematic analysis 1990-2017

Abstract

Primary brain and other central nervous system (CNS) cancers cause major burdens. In this study, we introduced a measure named the Quality of Care Index (QCI), which indirectly evaluates the quality of care given to patients with this group of cancers. Here we aimed to compare different geographic and socioeconomic patterns of CNS cancer care according to the novel measure introduced. In this regard, we acquired age-standardized primary epidemiologic measures were acquired from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study 1990-2017. The primary measures were combined to make four secondary indices which all of them indirectly show the quality of care given to patients. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method was utilized to calculate the essential component named QCI. Further analyses were made based on QCI to assess the quality of care globally, regionally, and nationally (with a scale of 0-100 which higher values represent better quality of care). For 2017, the global calculated QCI was 55.0. QCI showed a desirable condition in higher socio-demographic index (SDI) quintiles. Oppositely, low SDI quintile countries (7.7) had critically worse care quality. Western Pacific Region with the highest (76.9) and African Region with the lowest QCIs (9.9) were the two WHO regions extremes. Singapore was the country with the maximum QCI of 100, followed by Japan (99.9) and South Korea (98.9). In contrast, Swaziland (2.5), Lesotho (3.5), and Vanuatu (3.9) were countries with the worse condition. While the quality of care for most regions was desirable, regions with economic constraints showed to have poor quality of care and require enforcements toward this lethal diagnosis.

Global, regional, and national burden and quality of care index (QCI) of lip and oral cavity cancer: a systematic analysis of the Global Burden of Disease Study 1990–2017

“…The results of QCI analyses were in line with suggestions from a previous study of the burden of oral cancer wherein a decrease in the mortality rate and an increase in the cure rate of oral cancer was proposed globally [ 39 ]. These findings are in line with previous studies assessing the QCI for brain and other central nervous system cancers [ 43 ], hematologic malignancies [ 20 ], thyroid cancer [ 44 ], and pancreatic cancer [ 45 ], all of which demonstrated higher QCI scores in countries with higher socio-economic status. Since QCI indirectly considers access to care, the positive trends in the quality of care could be considered a promising outcome substantiating patient-oriented policies that have previously been expressed by cancer patients [ 46 ].…”

‘The Association of Scoliosis Properties with Spinal Cord Tethering: A Statistical Model for Prognostication’

“…This is in accordance with previous studies, demonstrating that scoliosis and many other neurosurgical disorders are more commonly found in females or it might be related to access and knowledge toward healthcare utilization. (30-32) A M:F ratio of 1:1.5 in dextroscoliosis cases and 2.7:1 for levoscoliosis patients, is similar to other works,(4, 15, 21, 33, 34) marking that male patients’ spinal column is more likely to deviate to the left. Overall, it seems that this model can represent the general population of scoliosis patients.…”

Level and trend of total plasma cholesterol in national and subnational of Iran: a systematic review and age-spatio-temporal analysis from 1990 to 2016

“…95% uncertainty intervals were generated for estimates and non-overlapping of estimates was regarded as statistical significance difference. The median, 2·5 percentile, and 97·5 percentile of this distribution were used as point estimates of lower and upper UIs, respectively [ 13 ]. The details of statistical methods can be found in the Appendix .…”