Review process

In the first phase of the review process, an extraction table was designed in which the following items included: first author’s name, study publish year, aim of study, number of all publications included, Meta-Analysis, Time Horizon covered, Quality assessment tool, Screening or treatment, perspective, Discounting, Sensitivity analysis, Incremental analysis and overall result. Validity of the data extraction table was confirmed by experts, and a pilot study was conducted for further improvement of the extraction table. Two authors (RA and A-AS) that had enough experience and knowledge were responsible for independently extraction of the data.

In first phase of article selection, articles with non-relevant titles were excluded. In the second phase, the abstract and the full text of articles were reviewed to include those articles matching the inclusion criteria. Reference management (Endnote X5, Thomson Reuters, and Philadelphia, PA 19130, USA) software was used for organizing and assessing the titles and abstracts, as well as for identifying the duplicate entries.