A note on common infections and the non-antibiotic treatment option |
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Authors: | Amitrajeet A Batabyal |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Economics, Rochester Institute of Technology, 92 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY 14623-5604, USA |
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Abstract: | Recently, Batabyal and Nijkamp (Environ Econ Policy Stud 7:39–51, 2005) have used a theoretical model of antibiotic use to study the relative merits of interventionist (antibiotics) and non-interventionist
(no antibiotics) treatment options. A key assumption in their paper is that the default treatment option is the interventionist
option. Because there are several instances in which this assumption is invalid, in this paper, we suppose that the default
treatment option is the non-interventionist option. Specifically, we first derive the long run average cost of treating a
common infection such as acute otitis media (AOM). Next, we show that there is a particular tolerance level and that when
a physician uses this tolerance level to determine when to administer the non-antibiotic medicine, the long run average cost
of treating the common infection under study is minimized.
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Keywords: | Antibiotics Non-antibiotics Optimal tolerance level Treatment Uncertainty |
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