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  • Early Cost-effectiveness An...
    Pirc, Eva; Federici, Carlo; Bošnjak, Maša; Perić, Barbara; Reberšek, Matej; Pecchia, Leandro; Glumac, Nebojša; Čemažar, Maja; Snoj, Marko; Serša, Gregor; Miklavčič, Damijan

    Clinical therapeutics, August 2020, 2020-08-00, 20200801, Letnik: 42, Številka: 8
    Journal Article

    Electrochemotherapy is increasingly entering into national and international guidelines, requiring formal evaluation of treatment costs and cost-effectiveness to ensure that its uptake provides value to budget-constrained health care systems. This study analyzed the early cost-effectiveness of electrochemotherapy in patients with Stage IIIc/IV skin melanoma in clinical practice in Slovenia. The costs of electrochemotherapy were compared to those of the standard of care, consisting of palliative treatment and therapy for symptoms. wThe study enrolled 23 patients treated with electrochemotherapy at the Institute of Oncology (Ljubljana, Slovenia). The mean cost of electrochemotherapy was estimated using patient-specific cost data on electrochemotherapy procedures and subsequent follow-up. Quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) were estimated by collecting EQ-5D-3L questionnaires at baseline, after complete or partial response following the treatment, and after a relapse of skin lesions. A discrete-time Markov model was built to estimate the lifetime costs and consequences of using electrochemotherapy compared to standard of care, from the perspective of the Slovenian health care system. The analysis was conducted separately in the whole patient sample and in the subset of patients with bleeding lesions. Deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were conducted to test model assumptions and to characterize the uncertainty around model parameters. In the whole patient population, electrochemotherapy for skin melanoma Stage IIIc/IV was expected to increase QALYs by 0.29 (95% credible interval CrI, 0.10–0.50), at the higher cost of 6568 EUR (95% CrI, 4593–8928) in comparison to the standard of care. At the cost-effectiveness threshold of 20,000 EUR/QALY, the estimated probabilities of electrochemotherapy being cost-effective compared to standard of care were 0.30 and 0.91 in the whole patient sample and in patients with bleeding lesions, respectively. In the whole sample population, a 50% reduction in the price of the electrodes was expected to increase the probability of electrochemotherapy being cost-effective from 0.30 to ~0.64. The findings from this cost-effectiveness analysis of data from clinical practice were based on a small sample size (ie, 23 patents), which made the subgroup of patients with bleeding lesions very small. Therefore, the findings in this patient population should be carefully interpreted. •With the development of the electroporation and new delivery systems, questions regarding cost-effectiveness needs to be addressed.•The average cost of single electrochemotherapy procedure was estimated to €2757.00 with the standard deviation €707.30.•Electrochemotherapy is slightly less cost-effective compared to standard of care, but the uncertainty over this estimate is large.•The probability of electrochemotherapy being cost-effective is estimated to be 30% for the whole sample, and 91% in patients with bleeding lesions.•The cost of the electrodes has a considerable impact when considering the whole patient sample.