Announcements

Due to the medical advances in neonatal intensive care medicine, the survival rate of premature infants has increased over the last two decades with babies born after 22 weeks of gestation now having a chance of survival. Based on interviews with five heads of Austrian perinatal care centers and a clinical ethicist, this literature review outlines the current evidence on decision-making practices (guidelines, good practice models, and communication strategies) and ethical challenges at the limit of viability.

Due to the medical advances in neonatal intensive care medicine, the survival rate of premature infants has increased over the last two decades, with babies born after 22 weeks of gestation now having a chance of survival. In a systematic review, recent data on survival and survival without impairment for extremely preterm infants was collected, as well as literature on resource needs in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). In addition, interviews with five heads of Austrian perinatal care centers provide insights into the current supply situation in Austrian NICUs.

Psychotherapy developed on the basis of various sciences (e.g., medicine or psychology) and became an independent scientific discipline with specific methods. Against this background, the report is based on concepts used in German-speaking countries as well as general and specific effect factors in psychotherapy. Furthermore, differences in the German-speaking area are presented in the legally recognized psychotherapeutic methods for the outpatient sector as well as the legal framework conditions for the recognition of new psychotherapeutic methods, vocational training and professional practice in psychotherapy.

Social Return On Investment measures the social „value for money“ of an intervention. In our project, though, we are providing an overview of studies measuring the return on investment of 15 health-related interventions from the societal perspective. The studies have shown that all interventions are worth the investment. Thus, the savings are higher than the costs of the interventions. The highest returns can be expected in the areas of “crime” and “income”.

A secondary analysis of reimbursement data (DRG-data) from public hospitals was conducted in order to determine how the Aortic Valve Replacement was implemented 2009-2016, either percutaneously (TAVI) or surgically (SAVR), in the Austrian healthcare system. For the period 2009 and 2016, in total 4,338 TAVI and 16,439 surgical aortic valve replacements (SAVR) were carried out. During this period the data show a constant rise in TAVI and a slight fall in SAVR use.  The analysed data show a rate of 107 TAVI per million inhabitants in Austria. 

For several years, the high-cost Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) has been a less invasive alternative to surgery for patients. The aim of the present work was to evaluate the health-economic evaluations of TAVI for inoperable patients and operable patients with high or intermediate surgical risk within a systematic review. The results showed that, TAVI was cost-effective compared to Medical Management in inoperable patients, whereas TAVI compared to Standard Management in inoperable patients and to Surgical Aortic Valve Replacement in patients with high surgical risk resulted in controversial results.