A Call for Joint Efforts to Combat Escalating Cancer-Care Costs - PiscoMed's Journal AMOR

Singapore, Singapore, December 16, 2015 --(PR.com)-- Breast cancer is estimated to be diagnosed in a staggering number of quarter million women worldwide this year alone, according to the American Cancer Society. Yet not many research studies have looked into the cost-effectiveness of its treatments.

Financial stress in battling a major affliction such as breast cancer can be overwhelming to patients. 25% of breast cancer survivors in the United States reported financial decline during treatment, according to a 2014 study by University of Michigan. One in three breast cancer survivors end up unemployed after treatment. Twelve percent of survivors were still paying off medical debt four years after treatment. Women who underwent chemotherapy had a 27% higher job-loss rate among more than 1,500 breast cancer survivors surveyed.

“Every year, researchers explore newer therapeutics which pave the way towards better treatment outcomes [of breast cancer]. However, these new therapeutics pose an extra burden on the already compromised economies all over the world,” noted Dr. Omar Abdel-Rahman, professor of clinical oncology at Ain Shams University and also the Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed open access journal Advances in Modern Oncology Research (AMOR).

“A frequently overlooked issue in measuring the advances in breast cancer management has been the impact of these advances on healthcare resource utilization,” he observed.

Dr. Abdel-Rahman pointed out a recent study, published in AMOR’s December 2015 issue and researched by associate professor Chieh-Yu Liu from the School of Nursing at National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, which addresses the issue by analyzing the cost-effectiveness of healthcare resource utilization in the treatment of patients with inoperable advanced breast cancer (IABC).

In his report, Liu observed that only a few studies have examined the economic burden of IABC, “probably because the IABC population is smaller than that of operable ABC.” Patients with IABC may require several conventional cytotoxic treatments and “if these treatments fail, the patients may receive targeted therapies, which further increased their economic burden,” Liu stated.

“With the failure of conventional cytotoxic treatments, the economic burden and healthcare resource utilization of early or late second-line targeted therapies are crucial. However, this concern has been addressed rarely,” he noted.

Liu therefore tapped Taiwan’s Bureau of National Health Insurance (BNHI) population-representative database of 1,629 newly diagnosed IABC patients between 2004 and 2006 who received at various time periods the cancer drugs capecitabine sequential to anthracycline-plus-taxane-based regimens (ATC) and trastuzumab sequential to anthracycline-plus-taxane-based regimens (ATT) as second-line treatment.

Capecitabine and trastuzumab have been widely used in advanced breast cancer treatments, Liu explained. “Capecitabine (trade name: Xeloda®), an orally administered fluoropyrimidine carbamate, has been proven effective in monotherapy for metastatic breast cancer, metastatic colorectal cancer, and adjuvant colon cancer in recent years. In addition, trastuzumab (trade names: Herclon®, Herceptin®), a monoclonal antibody that interferes with the HER2/neu receptor, has been proven to improve clinical outcome and prolong the survival of patients with HER2-positive breast cancer and is the standard drug for both adjuvant and metastatic cancers,” he stated.

Liu’s study categorized the patients into three groups according to their year of diagnosis: 2004–2005, 2005–2006, and 2006–2007. “For each year’s cohort, we further classified patients with IABC into four groups receiving capecitabine or trastuzumab subsequent to anthracycline-plus-taxane-based treatments for 0–3, 3–6, 6–9, and 9–12 months,” Liu reported.

Liu found that there were no significant differences observed in the ATC cohorts in terms of outpatient cost, inpatient cost and total costs, which implies that early or late administration of capecitabine drug did not affect its one-year healthcare costs.

On the other hand, Liu noted, patients being prescribed the drug trastuzumab would face an economic burden. “For patients receiving trastuzumab, the IPD (inpatient) cost was significantly higher for the late-use group (9–12 months) compared with the other groups. However, the OPD (outpatient) and total costs were significantly higher for the early-use groups (0–3 and 3–6 months),” he reported.

“This implies that physicians may prescribe trastuzumab for aggressive treatment or that the patients may prefer to receive trastuzumab combined with other chemotherapeutic treatments if first-line anthracycline- or taxane-based treatments fail,” he opined.

The economic burden of IABC on patients receiving early or late second-line capecitabine or trastuzumab after the first-line anthracycline- or taxane-based treatments therefore substantially influences the overall cost of breast cancer care, Liu concluded in his reported. “[O]ur results facilitate the development of cost-effective evaluations of breast cancer therapies,” he hoped.

Dr. Abdel-Rahman, echoing the findings, reiterated the importance of conducting and highlighting research studies such as Liu’s to assist decision-makers in especially the low and middle-income countries dealing with breast cancer treatment programmes on a national scale.

“Cancer is a global health problem with profound healthcare, social and economic consequences,” he furthered. “Proper assessment of aspects relevant to breast cancer health economics should be conducted after joint discussion between breast cancer physicians and experts in health economics and quality of medical care,” he added.

“I believe that further health economics studies are eagerly needed to guide proper decisions in breast cancer management,” Dr. Abdel-Rahman urged.