Economic Evaluation of Newborn Deafness Gene Screening As a Public Health Intervention in China: a Modelling Study

Overview

Journal BMJ Public Health

Publisher BMJ Publishing Group

Date 2025 Feb 28

PMID 40018245

Authors

Jun-Tao Shu

Yuan-Yuan Gu

Pei-Yao Zhai

Cheng Wen

Min Qian

You-Jia Wu

Xun Zhuang

Qing-Wen Zhu

Lu-Ping Zhang

Shan Jiang

Xiao-Mo Wang

Yin-Hua Jiang

Li-Hui Huang

Gang Qin

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: While global newborn hearing screening programmes (NHSP) are far from the optimal level, the combined hearing and genetic screening has emerged as an innovative approach of early healthcare interventions. There is a clear need for economic evaluation to establish whether newborn deafness gene screening (NDGS), currently mandated by many cities in China, is a good investment.

Methods: A decision-tree model was constructed to simulate a hypothetical 10-million Chinese newborn cohort over a lifetime with three strategies: (1) no screening, (2) NHSP (standard screening) and (3) NHSP+NDGS (combined screening). The presence of permanent congenital hearing loss (PCHL) and genetic mutation were assigned at birth and held constant for all strategies. Input parameters were obtained from the Cohort of Deafness-gene Screening study and literature review. The government contract price for genetic screening was US$77/child. Outcomes of interest included the number of early diagnosed PCHL, prelingual deafness, total deafness, special education referral, incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) and benefit-cost ratio (BCR).

Results: Both standard and combined screening strategies were more effective and more costly than 'no screening'. Compared with standard screening, combined screening led to 9112 (28.0%) more PCHL cases early detected, avoiding 4071 (66.9%) prelingual deafness cases and 3977 (15.6%) special education referrals. The ICER and BCR for combined screening were US$ 4995/disability-adjusted life-year (95% uncertainty interval, 2963 to 9265) and 1.78 (1.19 to 2.39), from healthcare sector perspective. Combined screening would dominate standard screening from societal perspective. Moreover, it remained cost-effective even in pessimistic scenarios.

Conclusions: Our findings have particular implication for the 'scale-up' of genetic screening at the national level in China. The model may serve as a feasible example for hearing screening strategies in other countries, as well as genetic screening for other diseases.

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