Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Ricciardi, Carlo
• Sorrentino, Alfonso
• Improta, Giovanni
• Abbate, Vincenzo
• Latessa, Imma
• Perrone, Antonietta
• Triassi, Maria
• Dell'aversana Orabona, Giovanni

Titel

A health technology assessment between two pharmacological therapies through Six Sigma: the case study of bone cancer

Ist Teil von

• TQM journal, 2020-11, Vol.32 (6), p.1507-1524

Ort / Verlag

Emerald Publishing Limited

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• PurposeHead and neck cancers are multi-factorial diseases that can affect many sides of people's life and are due to a lot of risk factors. According to their characteristics, the treatment can be surgical, use of radiation or chemotherapy. The use of a surgical treatment can lead to surgical infections that are a main theme in medicine. At the University hospital of Naples “Federico II”, two antibiotics were employed to tackle the issue of the infections and they are compared in this paper to find which one implies the lowest length of hospital stay (LOS) and the reduction of infections.Design/methodology/approachThe Six Sigma methodology and its problem-solving strategy DMAIC (define, measure, analyse, improve, control), already employed in the healthcare sector, were used as a tool of a health technology assessment between two drugs. In this paper the DMAIC roadmap is used to compare the Ceftriaxone (administered to a group of 48 patients) and the association of Cefazolin plus Clindamycin (administered to a group of 45 patients).FindingsThe results show that the LOS of patients treated with Ceftriaxone is lower than those who were treated with the association of Cefazolin plus Clindamycin, the difference is about 41%. Moreover, a lower number of complications and infections was found in patients who received Ceftriaxone. Finally, a greater number of antibiotic shifts was needed by patients treated with Cefazolin plus Clindamycin.Research limitations/implicationsWhile the paper enhances clearly the advantages for patients' outcomes regarding the LOS and the number of complications, it did not analyse the costs of the two antibiotics.Practical implicationsEmploying the Ceftriaxone would allow the Department of Maxillofacial Surgery to obtain lower LOS and a limited number of complications/infections for recovered patients, consequently reducing the hospitalization costs.Originality/valueThere is a double value in this paper: first of all, the comparison between the two antibiotics gives an answer to one of the main issues in medicine that is the reduction of hospital-acquired infections; secondly, the Six Sigma through its DMAIC cycle can be employed also to compare two biomedical technologies as a tool of health technology assessment studies.