Cost-effectiveness and contraceptive effectiveness of the transdermal contraceptive patch

Safety, efficacy and patient acceptability of the combined estrogen and progestin transdermal contraceptive patch: a review

“…A further study (Sonnenberg et al 2005) estimated the contraceptive effectiveness of the patch versus oral contraceptives in real life conditions. The probability of pregnancy with the transdermal patch was shown to be lower than with oral contraceptives in all age groups, included younger women (Figure 1).…”

“…As a consequence of improved compliance, a base-case analysis showed that increased perfect use of the patch would result in a saving of US$249 per woman over 2 years compared with oral contraceptives (Sonnenberg et al 2005). …”

“…Age-specific pregnancy rates for oral contraceptives and patch calculated in real life conditions (From data of Sonnenberg et al 2005). …”

Overstating the cost savings from contraceptive use

“…The failure to distinguish mistimed from unwanted births is common in the literature on the cost effectiveness of contraception [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] . Interestingly, two of these papers acknowledge this distinction 9,10 but then state that the cost of a birth was discounted for analyses in which the time horizon exceeded two years (emphasis ours).…”

Suitability of Excised Rabbit Ear Skin—Fresh and Frozen—for Evaluating Transdermal Permeation of Estradiol

“…Estradiol has been chosen as a model permeant because, although it has been transdermally administered since 1986 and despite its well-established marketed formulations, its transdermal application still represents an interesting and relevant topic. There are three reasons for this interest: recent controversies about hormone replacement therapy (Davison and Davis, 2003); increasing potential use of estradiol topical application for the treatment of skin aging and wound healing (Ashcroft and Ashworth 2003;Schmidt 2005); the quite new use of its derivatives in the transdermal contraceptive treatment (Sonnenberg et al, 2005). Objectives of our work were to characterize the permeability of fresh and frozen skin from solutions of estradiol and to compare the in vitro estradiol flux obtained from commercial patch formulations (Estraderm R TTS and Estraderm R MX) with claimed in vivo release.…”