The book focuses exclusively on the field of dentistry, with examples in each chapter, what makes its practical orientation even more useful for the ones who want to enter the world of economic evaluation.

The editors of the book ‘Introduction to Economic Evaluation in Oral Health Care’, which was published by the prestigious publisher Springer Nature, are the researchers Dr. Carlos Zaror of the Department of Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics, Faculty of Dentistry, Universidad de La Frontera (UFRO) in Chile, and Dr. Rodrigo Mariño of the Melbourne Dental School, University of Melbourne in Australia.

According to Dr. Zaror, economic evaluation in the field of health allows comparing different therapeutic alternatives in terms of their costs and effectiveness. Therefore, it is very useful in the decision-making regarding the implementation of certain interventions.

Given its importance and the need to address this issue, especially in oral health, both researchers, driven by their experience and knowledge in economic evaluation, decided to publish this book, which has 13 chapters.
“This is the first book about economic evaluation in the field of dentistry. All chapters contain examples for the field of oral health, since our profession is very particular and has certain particularities that may differ from other health areas. That is the difference and novelty of this book in relation to the existing ones. There are several books about economic evaluation on the market, but they focus on health sciences in general, and this one aims at professionals in the field of oral health,” Dr. Zaror pointed out.

“The idea for this book started with the work we carried out together with Dr. Carlos Zaror over time. We realized that economic evaluation in the field of health increased over the years, but the field of dentistry was falling behind compared with other medical disciplines. That is why we started to work on this book, not for training specialists in economic evaluation, but for the professionals to understand the process. It contains basic aspects with practical examples, so that people with no previous training in health economics can understand them,” explained Dr. Mariño.

For the publication of this book, both editors invited international experts from Australia, Chile, the United States, England and Sweden to collaborate and write some of the chapters.

“The practice-oriented nature of this book is very useful for those who are new in the field of economic evaluation, but it is also important for decision-makers in healthcare, when they need guidance on how to interpret the evidence available on economic evaluation. To this end, the last three chapters of the book focus on how to use the existing evidence to make decisions, whether clinical or from the point of view of public health in general,” Dr. Carlos Zaror pointed out.

Besides the international positioning of the editors in the field of economic evaluation in oral health care, this publication also allows them to build a cooperation network with the experts, researchers and institutions that participated in this publication.

The book is available in Springer Nature, under the following link:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-96289-0/

Written by: Soledad Millapan Sandoval
Faculty of Dentistry, UFRO
Translated by: UFRO Communications Office