Cost-effectiveness of hydrotherapy versus land-based therapy in patients with musculoskeletal disorders in Singapore

Abstract

Hydrotherapy was a cost-effective rehabilitation compared to land-based therapy for a population with MSDs in Singapore. However, the benefit of hydrotherapy was not observed in patients with OA.

A systematic review of economic models for cost effectiveness of physiotherapy interventions following total knee and hip replacement

“…They were conducted in the United States of America (n = 1), Singapore (n = 1) and Italy (n = 1). The included studies were carried out from the healthcare [16] and societal perspective [17,18]. Two of the included studies were cost-utility analysis (CUA) expressing outcomes in QALYs [16,17] and one study was CUA and cost-effectiveness analysis [18].…”

“…The included studies were carried out from the healthcare [16] and societal perspective [17,18]. Two of the included studies were cost-utility analysis (CUA) expressing outcomes in QALYs [16,17] and one study was CUA and cost-effectiveness analysis [18]. The types of interventions included in the studies were telephone health coaching & financial incentives to promote physical activity [16], hydrotherapy [17] and standard rehabilitation and telerehabilitation [18].…”

“…The disease states which were defined by OA severity include: normal radiograph (no OA), questionable osteophytes (preradiographic OA), definite osteophytes (early OA), <50% narrowing of knee joint space (advanced OA), and ≥50% narrowing of joint space (end-stage OA). A decision-analytic model in the form of a decision tree was used to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of hydrotherapy vs land-based therapy; the model duration was set as 3 months [17]. The third study that evaluated the cost-effectiveness and cost-utility of tele-rehabilitation adopted a Markov model and the cycle length considered was 1 year [19].…”

“…sources of data used to inform their model structure, nor did they provide justification for the scope of the model. Two studies [16,19] used a lifetime time horizon and one study justified a three-month time horizon [17]. The disease states were described in all the included studies.…”

“…The sources of data used to calculate the transition probabilities were indicated in two studies [16,19]. Neither the sources nor the calculation of the transition probabilities were presented in one of the stud-ies [17]. The sources and derivation of utilities used for the health states were transparent in all the included studies.…”