Health-care cost reduction resulting from primary-care allergy testing in children in Italy

Table 1 Costs, in the 1^st and 2^nd year and their sum after the initial primary care consultation, of use of medications and of subsequent physician visits and the average number (n) of courses of medication, further visits and tests experienced by a patient in each diagnostic category

Cost items	Cost (€) year		Mean number of episodes in categories a1 to a12
	1 ^st	2 ^nd	sum	a1	a2	a3	a4	a5	a6	a7	a8	a9	a10	a11	a12
Initial allergy test	12	12	24	0	0	0	0	0	0	1(0)^e	1(0)	1(0)	1(0)	1(0)	1(0)
Subsequent sIgE tests	8.8	8.5	17.3	0	0	0	0	0	0	10(0)	10(0)	10(0)	0(0)	0(0)	0(0)
Antihistamine use	182^a	177	359	0.56	0.44	0.60	0.43	0.43	0.19	0	0.62	0.50	0	0.20	0.09
Corticosteroids use	730^b	709	1439	0.44	0.38	0.40	0.48	0.37	0.10	0	0.23	0.25	0.67	0	0.11
Bronchodilators use	64^c	62	126	0.11	0.28	0.40	0.33	0.31	0.05	0	0.10	0.25	0	0.10	0.04
Visit Primary care	65	63	128	0.56	0.63	0.60	0.52	0.52	0.29	0	0.60	1	0.33	0.20	0.38
Visit to allergist	65	63	128	0.11	0.24	0	0	0.17	0.05	0	0.32	0.50	0	0.10	0.16

ISSN: 1824-7288