Talk:Defined daily dose

Merge
Defined daily dose is a function of maintenance dose, so I propose it be fused into that article.
 * ✅ Merge. --Bobjgalindo (talk) 18:51, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: The merge discussion is at Talk:Maintenance dose. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 20:46, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Example
An example of misuse of cost per DDD to compare the cost of two drugs in the same ATC Code group was removed by Doc James: "ref needed, I could equally add that starting people on a medicine with half the cost per DDD when the medications are equally effective will". The example, imo, seemed fair and supported by the point made in the source, but I have found and inserted a sourced example (Comparative Cost Analysis: Atorvastatin vs. Rosuvastatin ODB Program, 2006-07), though it is necessarily more complex to explain.

The claim that one could "equally add that starting people on a medicine with half the cost per DDD when the medications are equally effective will" is a little hard to parse and seems the text has been truncated. It appears to suggest one could equally given an example where using cost per DDD to compare two drugs turned out to give a correct conclusion. This simply isn't a valid thing to do at all. If a source recommends against doing something because sometimes (occasionally or often) it goes badly wrong, giving an example when one got lucky is not supportive of that source or recommendation. The point is that "cost per DDD" is an insufficient metric for making such cost decisions, partly because it is very approximate and may be out-of-date, but also because one needs additional knowledge (are two drugs therapeutically equivalent at the DDD, and does the current practice of prescribing in a given country for a given indication (RDD) correspond to the DDD). That's the point, and only an example that supports the point is valid. -- Colin°Talk 13:00, 11 January 2020 (UTC)