Cancer clinicians should understand and consider the economic impact of new interventions, which often have substantial costs, according to a report appearing in the July/August issue of CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.
The report says health care budget constraints have made it necessary for clinicians to be aware of the relative costs and benefits of new interventions used in cancer screening, diagnosis, treatment, and support services for patients.
The report highlights several examples of new interventions that may help specific populations but result in increased costs. They include magnetic resonance imaging screening for breast cancer, which at $1,000 per image is ten times the cost of screening mammography; $1,800 for a positron emission tomography (PET) scan for cancer staging; $48,000 per patient per year for the use of intensity-modulated radiation therapy to treat prostate cancer; $50,000 per patient per year for trastuzumab (Herceptin) in the treatment of HER-2-positive breast cancer; $1,800 per month for gefitinib (Iressa) for the treatment of lung cancer; and more than $8,000 for a 6-day course of palifermin (Kepivance) in the treatment of oral mucositis.