Cost-effectiveness acceptability frontier

The cost-effectiveness acceptability frontier (CEAF) is a graph that summarises the uncertainty surrounding the cost effectiveness of interventions compared in a model, illustrating which intervention is most likely to be economically preferred across a range of cost-effectiveness thresholds. Similar to the cost-effectiveness acceptability curve, the CEAF plots cost-effectiveness thresholds on the horizontal axis against the probability that a specific intervention will be cost-effective at that threshold on the vertical axis. As the threshold increases, the economically preferred treatment changes; these ‘switch points’ are where the threshold exceeds the relevant incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) for the intervention of interest. The CEAF is particularly useful when comparing three or more interventions, where there can be multiple ‘switch points’ where the preferred strategy changes at different threshold values.