Aim: To estimate management cost of NSCLC ALK+ patients with and without brain metastasis (BM), and to compare annual costs in patients treated with alectinib or crizotinib.
Methods: Management cost/year (€ 2018) in patients with and without BM was estimated with disaggregated resource consumption provided by local oncologists, including medical visits, hospitalizations, diagnostic/laboratory tests, imaging techniques and surgical procedures. The comparison of costs/year with alectinib and crizotinib, considered the cumulative 12-month incidence of BM in ALEX trial (9.4 and 41.4%, respectively).
Results: Management cost was €6173.42/patient-year without BM and €21,637.50/patient-year with BM. With alectinib, average cost/patient was lower than crizotinib (€4948.51/patient-year).
Conclusion: Prevention of BM with alectinib may result in reductions of cost/year in the management of advanced ALK+ NSCLC.
Keywords: ALK NSCLC; alectinib; costs; crizotinib; economic evaluation; metastasis CNS.
© 2020 Authors.