Gary H. Lyman, MD, MPH, FRCP (EDIN)

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Costs of Treating Elderly Patients With Cancer: What Are We Measuring in the Absence of Reliable Evidence?

June 1st 2007

Patients aged 65 years and older represent 12% of the US population yet account for approximately 56% of cancer cases and 69% of all cancer mortalities. The overall cost of cancer in 2005 was $209.9 billion—$74 billion for direct medical costs and $118.4 billion for indirect mortality costs. This paper considers the direct, indirect, and out-of-pocket expenditures incurred by cancer patients ‚â • 50 years of age. Several major empirical studies on supportive care for older patients and cancer-related costs were reviewed. Insurance coverage, hematologic malignancies, squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck, and cancers of the breast, prostate, colorectum, and lung were evaluated. Major sources of direct medical expenditures covered by third-party insurers for patients aged 65 years and older include extended length of hospital stay, home health assistance following hospital discharge, adjuvant prescription medications, lower-risk treatment (for prostate cancer), and advent of new pharmaceuticals (for colorectal cancer). The mean total direct medical cost for breast cancer is $35,164, and the cumulative cost for prostate cancer is $42,570. Emerging targeted cancer drug costs range from $20,000 to $50,000 annually per patient. Additional clinical trials and cost-effective treatments are needed for older patients to ameliorate the disproportionate economic burden among older individuals with cancer. Additional research about cancer costs may also lead to reforms in cancer care reimbursement, and therefore provide access to affordable health care for older patients.


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Risk Assessment in Oncology Clinical Practice

November 1st 2003

Myelosuppression and neutropenia represent the major dose-limitingtoxicity of cancer chemotherapy. Chemotherapy-induced neutropeniamay be accompanied by fever, presumably due to life-threateninginfection, which generally requires hospitalization for evaluationand treatment with empiric broad-spectrum antibiotics. The resultingfebrile neutropenia is a major cause of the morbidity, mortality, andcosts associated with the treatment of patients with cancer. Furthermore,the threat of febrile neutropenia often results in chemotherapydose reductions and delays, which can compromise long-term clinicaloutcomes. Prophylactic colony-stimulating factor (CSF) has been shownto reduce the incidence, severity, and duration of neutropenia and itscomplications. Guidelines from the American Society of Clinical Oncologyrecommend the use of CSF on the basis of the myelosuppressivepotential of the chemotherapy regimen. The challenge in ensuring theappropriate and cost-effective use of prophylactic CSF is to determinewhich patients would be most likely to benefit from it. A number ofpatient-, disease-, and treatment-related factors are associated with anincreased risk of neutropenia and its complications. A number of clinicalpredictive models have been developed from retrospective datasetsto identify patients at greater risk for neutropenia and its complications.Early studies have demonstrated the potential of such models toguide the targeted use of CSF to those patients who are most likely tobenefit from the early use of these supportive agents. Additional prospectiveresearch is needed to develop more accurate and valid riskmodels and to evaluate the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of modeltargeteduse of CSF in high-risk patients.