BACE Trial Substudy 2 - FarmEc Substudy

Our multicenter randomized trial executed in one country will provide an excellent tool for more precise health economic assessments. In a first approach, rough estimates on savings of direct costs in the entire study cohort will be made by taking into account the Flemish average costs for a single hospitalization day at a respiratory ward, for a day at intensive care, for an emergency visit, for a home physician contact and for an antibiotic-steroid course. A more detailed cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analysis at 3 and 9 months interval will only be performed in case significant clinical benefits are found in favor of the active treatment. For this purpose medical resource use data will be collected retrospectively via hospital invoices (direct costs including drugs, physician visits, laboratory tests, technical exams, medical imaging, hospital stay) but also prospectively via patient diaries, to cover direct and indirect costs during the entire outpatient period, and will be linked to EQ5D scores. Patient will have to give informed consent that additional to the clinical evaluation, invoices will be collected. However, individual patients can still opt out for these analyses (sub-study) and only participate in the medical intervention study (main study).