Good decisions on which healthinterventions to invest can be facilitated by high qualityevaluations of the cost-effectiveness of interventions.Although there are several reviews of evaluations of thecost-effectiveness of smoking cessation programs, thereviews have had little to say about the quality of thestudies. The present study tries to fill this gap bythoroughly evaluating the quality of economic evaluations ofinterventions to reduc e tobacco consumption. First, thegeneral characteristics of all the studies reviewed aredescribed, and then the quality of epidemiologicalcharacteristics and of the economic evaluation is analyzed,using a criteria list proposed by Drummond et al. (1997).The analysis finds that the quality of many aspects of manyof the studies leaves much to be desired, judged against theguidelines offered by Drummond et al. However, the studiesdo consistently conclude that stop-smoking interventions arecost-effective, and this conclusion is robust whensensitivity analyses are performed. The cost-effectivenessratios estimated by the studies for smoking cessationinterventions are much lower than most other health caretreatments. The study this concludes that the broadconclusion that treatments to reduce the number of smokersare cost-effective at least in relative terms, is likely tobe true, despite the concerns expressed about the quality ofthe economic evaluations. The implication for policymakersis that smoking cessation interventions are worthwhile.
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