Evidence-Based Medicine
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Sep 14, 2016; 22(34): 7813-7823
Published online Sep 14, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i34.7813
Cost effectiveness of routine duodenal biopsies in iron deficiency anemia
Efrat Broide, Shay Matalon, Ofra Kriger-Sharabi, Vered Richter, Haim Shirin, Moshe Leshno
Efrat Broide, Shay Matalon, Ofra Kriger-Sharabi, Vered Richter, Haim Shirin, The Kamila Gonczarowski Institute of Gastroenterology, Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, Zerifin 70300, Israel
Moshe Leshno, Faculty of Business Administration, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 39040, Israel
Author contributions: Broide E and Matalon S contributed equally to this work; Broide E is the guarantor of article; Leshno M, Broide E and Matalon S performed the research, collected and analyzed the data; Shirin H and Leshno M designed the research study; Broide E, Matalon S, Richter V and Kriger-Sharabi O wrote the paper; Matalon S, Richter V and Kriger-Sharabi O contributed to the design of the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Efrat Broide, MD, Professor of Pediatrics Gastroenterology, The Kamila Gonczarowski Institute of Gastroenterology, Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, Beer Ya'akov, Zerifin 70300, Israel. efibroide@yahoo.com
Telephone: +972-54419077 Fax: +972-89779727
Received: May 5, 2016
Peer-review started: May 6, 2016
First decision: June 20, 2016
Revised: July 11, 2016
Accepted: July 31, 2016
Article in press: August 1, 2016
Published online: September 14, 2016
Processing time: 125 Days and 11.9 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Common practice, and currents recommendations are to perform celiac serology tests and endoscopies to iron defeciency patients. Obtaining duodenal biopsies is usually reserved to patients with positive celiac serology. We aimed to investigate the cost effectiveness of routine duodenal biopsies in each and every patient with iron deficiency anemia, regardless serology status. We found this strategy to have a higher quality adjusted life years, a lower cost and a higher incremental cost effectiveness ratio over the common strategy of selected duodenal biopsies strategy.