Costs and treatment patterns in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer in the private health system

Abstract

Introduction: In Brazil, the cancer represents the second cause of death, being only behind of cardiovascular diseases and representing a great economic impact, which is observed by the raise of chemotherapies performed in the country. Among neoplasm, lung cancer is the most common cancer around the world and in accordance with INCA data, in 2013, it was the cancer with the largest number of deaths. Objective: Estimate the direct medical costs of patients diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in the private healthcare system. Methods: It was performed a retrospective analysis of diagnosed patients’ data who were treated for advanced NSCLC during the period of 2012 to 2015 in the Brazilian private healthcare system. For the cost of each treatment regimen, it was used the micro-costing method in which the costs were obtained from Hierarchical Brazilian Classification of Medical Procedures, SIMPRO magazine, and CMED list. Results: The analysis demonstrated that 88% of patients with lung cancer are diagnosed late (IIIB/ IV) with the median age of 65 years and only 10,15% of patients had positive results for EGFR and ALK genetic tests. There were no observed changes in the therapeutic choice during the period analyzed and the cost of treatment can achieve R$ 410.848,34 for the treatment of advanced NSCLC. Conclusion: The analysis demonstrated the increasing need of therapies that promote increasing survival in NSCLC patients and can contribute to optimize the resource use.