Objective: The aim of this work was to assess the cost-effectiveness of induction of labor with outpatient balloon catheter cervical priming versus inpatient prostaglandin vaginal gel or tape.
Study design: Economic evaluation alongside a multi-centre, randomized controlled trial at eight Australian maternity hospitals. The trial reported on 448 women with live singleton term pregnancies, undergoing induction of labor for low-risk indications between September 2015 and October 2018. An economic decision tree model was designed from a health services perspective from time of induction of labor to hospital discharge. Sensitivity and subgroup analyses were performed to test the robustness of model outcomes. We estimated resource use, collected data on health outcomes (using EQ-5D-3 L questionnaire) and reported cost (Australian Dollars) per quality-adjusted life year gained, incremental cost-effect ratio and net monetary benefit.
Results: Deterministic analysis showed lower mean costs ($7294 versus $7585) in the outpatient-balloon (n = 205) compared to the inpatient-prostaglandin group (n = 243), with similar health outcomes (0.75 vs 0.74 quality-adjusted life years gained) and overall higher net monetary benefit ($30,054 vs $29,338). In probabilistic analyses outpatient-balloon induction of labor was cost-effective in 55.3 % of all simulations and 59.1 % for women with favourable cervix (modified Bishop score >3) and 64.5 % for nulliparous women.
Conclusions: Outpatient-balloon induction of labor may be cost-saving compared to inpatient induction of labor with prostaglandin and is most likely to be cost-effective for nulliparous women, but more research is warranted in other settings to explore the generalisability of results.
Keywords: Balloon ripening; Cost-effectiveness; Decision analysis; Economic modelling; Labor induced; Randomized controlled trial.
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