The comparison of "no treatment" disease progression costs versus the economic impact of SOF-based regimens was investigated.
The comparison of 1) "no treatment" disease progression costs vs 2) the economic impact of SOF-based regimens was investigated.
Costs associated with further therapy following disease progression were categorised as either drug costs (i.e., drug acquisition costs and costs associated with treatment delivery) or disease progression costs (i.e., costs associated with further hospitalisation and radiotherapy).
Both cumulative drug costs per patient (£2007 in the irinotecan+5-FU/FA arm vs £3601 in the 5-FU/FA arm) (Table 5), and cumulative diseaase progression costs per patient during follow-up (£1484 vs £2460, respectively) (Table 6) were up to 45% lower in the combination treatment arm.
Furthermore, BEV plus PACL was associated with a significantly higher pre-progression cost (EVE plus EXE: €1,000 vs. BEV plus PACL: €3,744), which may be attributed to the pre-treatment medications as well as the prophylactic treatments required.
The higher pre-progression cost of the BEV plus CAPE arm (€3,946) accounted for the difference in the total lifetime cost between EVE plus EXE and BEV plus CAPE, while the BEV plus CAPE alternative generated an incremental cost of €4,813 in the post-progression state (EVE plus EXE: €27,495 vs. BEV plus CAPE: €32,308) (Table 2).
Second, we further examined annualized costs among only those patients who progressed, comparing costs prior to progression with costs incurred following progression.
Because utilization and costs are expected to increase overtime as a result of disease progression, possible cost savings in studies with pre-post designs may be underestimated.
Historically, researchers have studied HCV disease progression and cost using Markov models.
