TY - JOUR
T1 - Spending on targeted therapies reduced mortality in patients with advanced-stage breast cancer
AU - Li, Meng
AU - Goldman, Dana P.
AU - Chen, Alice J.
N1 - Funding Information:
Research reported in this publication was supported by the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics and by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Grant Nos. 2P30AG043073, P30AG024968, and P01AG033559. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Meng Li reports consulting fees from Genentech on topics unrelated to the manuscript. Dana Goldman serves as a paid scientific adviser to Biogen and GRAIL. Alice Chen reports consulting fees from Amgen and Novartis on topics unrelated to the manuscript.
Funding Information:
Research reported in this publication was supported by the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics and by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Grant Nos.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Project HOPE— The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.
PY - 2021/5
Y1 - 2021/5
N2 - Costly targeted therapies are playing an increasingly important role in treating cancer. To characterize trends in spending on targeted therapies for breast cancer and to estimate the association of these therapies with cancer mortality, we analyzed cancer diagnoses in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program–Medicare linked database. We categorized total cancer spending into spending on targeted therapies, spending on nontargeted therapies, and spending on other cancer care. Diagnosis-year spending on targeted therapies increased from $1,024 per patient in 2000 to $18,809 per patient in 2015 for patients with advanced-stage cancer and from $82 to $3,289 for patients with early-stage cancer. For patients with advanced-stage cancer, a $1,000 increase in spending on targeted therapies in the diagnosis year was associated with a 0.55-percentage-point decrease in adjusted three-year cancer mortality, whereas for patients with early-stage cancer, there was no association. The other two types of spending (on nontargeted therapies and other cancer care) were not associated with mortality among patients with either advanced-or early-stage cancer. Our results indicate that among various types of cancer treatments, only targeted therapies generated meaningful survival gains for patients with advanced-stage breast cancer.
AB - Costly targeted therapies are playing an increasingly important role in treating cancer. To characterize trends in spending on targeted therapies for breast cancer and to estimate the association of these therapies with cancer mortality, we analyzed cancer diagnoses in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program–Medicare linked database. We categorized total cancer spending into spending on targeted therapies, spending on nontargeted therapies, and spending on other cancer care. Diagnosis-year spending on targeted therapies increased from $1,024 per patient in 2000 to $18,809 per patient in 2015 for patients with advanced-stage cancer and from $82 to $3,289 for patients with early-stage cancer. For patients with advanced-stage cancer, a $1,000 increase in spending on targeted therapies in the diagnosis year was associated with a 0.55-percentage-point decrease in adjusted three-year cancer mortality, whereas for patients with early-stage cancer, there was no association. The other two types of spending (on nontargeted therapies and other cancer care) were not associated with mortality among patients with either advanced-or early-stage cancer. Our results indicate that among various types of cancer treatments, only targeted therapies generated meaningful survival gains for patients with advanced-stage breast cancer.
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U2 - 10.1377/hlthaff.2020.01714
DO - 10.1377/hlthaff.2020.01714
M3 - Article
C2 - 33939503
AN - SCOPUS:85105276596
SN - 0278-2715
VL - 40
SP - 763
EP - 771
JO - Health Affairs
JF - Health Affairs
IS - 5
ER -