BEYOND SURVIVAL - ECONOMIC-ANALYSES OF CHEMOTHERAPY IN ADVANCED, INOPERABLE NSCLC

Research shows that chemotherapy for inoperable non-small-cell lung ca ncer (NSCLC) improves survival. The economic implications of this trea tment choice may be substantial, This paper reviews studies examining the cost-effectiveness of chemotherapy in this setting. MEDLINE, PDQ, Cancerlit, EMBASE, and the Nursing & Allied Health databases were sear ched using the terms cost, cost-effectiveness, chemotherapy, and nonsm all-cell lung cancer, The search identified 17 studies. Most of these studies utilized data from various sources to model the impact and cos t of chemotherapy, The remaining studies were concurrent or retrospect ive analyses of individual clinical trials. Findings suggest that chem otherapy for stages IIIb and IV non-small-cell lung cancer can be cost -effective and, in some cases, may actually be less expensive than sup portive care alone, Economic analyses also indicate that allocating re sources for chemotherapy in this setting can be justified relative to many treatment expenditures for other types of cancer and other diseas es, Application of these findings may be hindered by the wide variety of techniques used and by several methodologic issues, including the f ailure to address patients' treatment preferences, Yet, economic analy ses of inoperable non-small-cell lung cancer can provide important inf ormation to complement survival and quality-of-life data ill resource allocation decisions.