An economic evaluation of testing preterm children for the early diagnosis of Cerebral Palsy using Australian Data.

Background: Cerebral palsy is the world most common lifelong disability, affecting around 20 million people in the world, and generating a yearly cost in the order of trillions. There is agreement that early intervention can have potential lifelong benefits on children affected by cerebral palsy, and several ongoing clinical trials are assessing the magnitude of these benefits. Objective: This article presents an economic analysis of the costs of a protocol for early diagnosis where all children born preterm are tested. This protocol would imply an extra cost of $105,815 for the early detection of one case of cerebral palsy. Methods: This study uses Australian data on the prevalence of CP per gestational age at birth to estimate the costs of testing all preterm children and the cost of early treatment. Results: Our analysis finds that if early intervention increases patients’ well-being at least by 6 percent, then the costs of this early diagnosis protocol would be compensated. This is a conservative estimate as we are not considering potential improvements in productivity caused by early treatments. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that testing all preterm births could generate benefits that outweigh the cost. This is likely not the most cost-effective protocol, and in order to develop a cost effective early-testing protocol, systematic registers for CP should be established along the lines of the Australian one. JEL codes I10, I18