Household out of Pocket Expenditure of Caesarean Section Delivery in Bangladesh: A Critical Review of the Published Literature

Various studies in Bangladesh examined the cost of caesarean section delivery. However, no systematic investigation on the quality of these studies has been performed. The aim of this study is to systematically review the published literature on caesarean section delivery cost in Bangladesh and to scrutiny the methodological quality of these studies. A comprehensive search strategy was developed to search Medline by the PubMed interface. Due to small number of article was found, various report that was done in cost of cesarean section delivery in Bangladesh were also identified. Among the selected studies, respondent selection procedure was not consistent. Regarding recall error, only two studies mentioned the problem of recall error and only one studytook steps to minimize the recall bias. Only one study conducted a scientific method to measure the sample size of the study. Only one study disaggregated medical costs according to various components, whereas only two studies considered productivity lost as a part of their total cost analysis. However, no study measured the cost of intangible which refers to the cost of patient pain and sufferings. The majority of the studies did not follow the scientific method of cost of illness study, which consequently resulted into a lack of robustness of the analysis. In general, the less technical issues are targeted by most of the study.The capacity building on cost of illness analysis among the researcher in Bangladesh is required.