[Cost-effectiveness of radiopharmaceuticals in the hospital]

To the Editor: We would like to thank Dr Markou for highlighting the important issue of medical economics. Dr. Markou suggested some basic principles of economic methodologies and tools that are useful in assessing the costs of nuclear medicine procedures. In our paper (Hell J Nucl Med 2004; 7:158-161), we have thoroughly described the framework we used for the economic evaluation of some of the most common nuclear medicine procedures. Moreover, the purpose of our study was to compare actual cost estimates for common diagnostic procedures in the nuclear medicine department, with current hospital prices. Our results have recognized the need to consider the actual costing of nuclear medicine tests and to allocate health care resources on the basis of these economic evaluations. Alphas Dr Markou has pointed out, we apologize for the fact that in Figure 1 instead of (99m)Tc-MAG-3, we mistakenly wrote (99m)Tc-DTPA both in the actual figure and in its footnote.