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

Table 2 Strategy, IgE results, physician's diagnosis, prevalences, frequencies, probabilities and costs in the twelve possible diagnostics categories, a1 to a12.

Category (no. obs)		Strategy	Initial IgE test	Physcian's diagnosis	¹Prevalence	Observed frequence	²Probability (p)	³Expected category cost (€)
								year 1	⁴year 2	year 1&2
a1	(9)	no-test	pos	uncertain	0,55	0,09	0,050	24	23	47
a2	(79)	no-test	pos	allergy	0,55	0,81	0,446	192	186	377
a3	(10)	no-test	pos	no-allergy	0,55	0,10	0,055	26	25	52
a4	(21)	no-test	neg	uncertain	0,45	0,22	0,099	48	46	94
a5	(54)	no-test	neg	allergy	0,45	0,56	0,252	105	102	206
a6	(21)	no-test	neg	no-allergy	0,45	0,22	0,099	13	13	26
a7	(1)	test	pos	uncertain	0,55	0,01	0,006	1	0	1
a8	(87)	test	pos	allergy	0,55	0,95	0,523	232	175	408
a9	(4)	test	pos	no-allergy	0,55	0,04	0,022	12	9	21
a10	(3)	test	neg	uncertain	0,45	0,05	0,023	12	12	24
a11	(10)	test	neg	allergy	0,45	0,17	0,077	6	5	10
a12	(45)	test	neg	no-allergy	0,45	0,78	0,351	51	46	97

¹frequence of positive results during screening, i.e. positive results in Phadiatop/Padiatop Infant
²calculated from the prevalence and observed frequence of being in category
³calculated as the sum of costs for medications, physician visits and allergy tests adjusted for observed episodes per patient on pathway as given in Table 1 and probability of being in category.
⁴costs in 2^nd year were discounted to correspond to 1^st year (rate:3%)

ISSN: 1824-7288