Analytical approaches: For the base case analysis,
we derived the incremental costs of intraoperative
prevention relative to current practice and the
related health benefit in terms of quality-adjusted
life days gained.39 Using $50,000 as the monetary
value for 1 quality-adjusted life year, we converted
the health benefit to a monetary equivalent.51 We
then combined the monetary equivalent with the
incremental cost to derive the net benefit of prevention.
39 We conducted 1-way sensitivity analysis by
varying each of the key model inputs over its plausible
range to assess the corresponding variation in
the net benefit of prevention. A positive net benefit
indicates that prevention is cost effective relative
to current practice.
The net benefit of in