Economic costs associated with miscarriage: A secondary analysis of QResearch
Miscarriage is defined as the loss of pregnancy before the fetus reaches viability and is the most common complication of pregnancy affecting as many as 15–25% of pregnancies. There are approximately 200,000 miscarriages per year in the UK. Most miscarriages are sporadic in nature, but approximately 5% of women experience recurrent miscarriage with adverse consequences for their psychological well-being and future reproductive potential.
Despite a growing evidence base about the clinical, reproductive and psychological consequences of miscarriage, relatively little is known about the economic consequences of miscarriage or the cost-effectiveness of interventions or strategies aimed at its prevention or management.
This study aims to estimate the economic costs associated with sporadic and recurrent miscarriage using data within the QResearch database, a large primary care database linked to Hospital Episode Statistics admitted patient care and outpatient data. Cumulative healthcare service use and costs covering primary and secondary health care services over three months, one year and five years of follow-up will be estimated for a study group identified as experiencing a miscarriage and two control groups, the first a control group of women with viable pregnancies matched to cases by gestational age upon study entry, and the second a control group of non-pregnant women matched for the woman's age upon study entry.
Inverse probability weighted generalised estimating equations will be used to model non-linear trends in healthcare service use and costs over time, accounting for missing data, and adjusting for year of study entry, maternal age, previous pregnancy history, body mass index, maternal medical conditions, thrombophilia’s, and lifestyle factors such as smoking. It is anticipated that the study will generate a compendium of economic variables and values that are transportable to future economic analyses based upon QResearch.
Project leads:
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Stavros Petrou
Academic Research Lead in Health Economics
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Corneliu Bolbocean
Senior Researcher in Health Economics
Collaborators:
Julia Hippisley-Cox, University of Oxford
Catia Nicodemo, University of Oxford
Siobhan Quenby, University of Warwick
Arri Cooramasamy, University of Birmingham
Dates:
September 2020 – December 2021
Funder:
Tommy's
National Institute for Health Research School for Primary Care Research
Our team
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Stavros Petrou
Academic Research Lead in Health Economics
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Lucy Abel
Health Economist, DPhil student
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Felix Achana
Senior Researcher in Health Economics
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Laura Armitage
Wellcome Trust Doctoral Research Fellow
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Corneliu Bolbocean
Senior Researcher in Health Economics
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Laia Bosque Mercader
Research Fellow in Health Economics
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Lin Bowker-Lonnecker
DPhil Student
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John Buckell
Researcher
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Padraig Dixon
Senior Researcher in Health Economics
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Patrick Fahr
Quantitative Researcher
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Carmen Fierro Martinez
NIHR Pre-Doctoral Fellow
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Nadeem Hussein
NIHR Pre-Doctoral Fellow
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Joseph Kwon
Researcher in Health Economics
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Sungwook Kim
Senior researcher in Health Economics
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Joan Madia
Researcher in Health Economics
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Joaquim Vidiella Martin
Researcher in Economics
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Catia Nicodemo
Senior Research Fellow in Health Economics
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Olu Onyimadu
Health Economist, DPhil Candidate
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May Png
Senior Researcher in Health Economics
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Stuart Redding
Project Lead, Centre for Health Service Economics & Organisation
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Elizabeth-Ann Schroeder
Senior Researcher in Health Economics
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Apostolos Tsiachristas
Associate Professor
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Raphael Wittenberg
Deputy Director, Centre for Health Service Economics and Organisation
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Yaling Yang
Senior Researcher in Health Economics