01/15/2016    

DERMATOLOGY RESEARCH

Empirical Terbinafine for Nail Fungus Is Most Cost-effective

 

Empirical treatment of onychomycosis with terbinafine is far more cost-effective than confirmatory testing before treatment, according to new findings. Confirmatory testing would cost millions of dollars per clinically relevant case of liver toxicity prevented, Dr. Arash Mostaghimi of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and colleagues found.

 

"As the cost of the medication has been reduced, the amount of money that you'd have to spend in order to prevent a case of liver injury is prohibitively high," Dr. Mostaghimi told Reuters Health in a telephone interview. "What we know now over time is that the risk of liver injury is much smaller than we thought it was."

 

Source: Anne Harding, Reuters Health via Medscape [1/14/16]