Colorectal Cancer Treatment Costs Vary Widely
(HealthDay News) -- The cost of treating colorectal cancer can vary by tens of thousands of dollars per patient.
To reach that conclusion, researchers compared the eight most commonly prescribed therapeutic regimens used to treat more than 400 patients at 115 ambulatory care centers across the United States.
The regimens, which included supportive agents often required to ease treatment-related side effects such as nausea, ranged from the older chemotherapy cocktail 5-FU/LV (5-fluoroucil and leucovorin calcium) to newer therapies that include bevacizumab (brand name Avastin), which choke off a tumor's blood supply.
"The total cost of chemotherapy to treat colorectal cancer may differ by as much as $36,999 per patient, depending on the regimen," study senior investigator Dr. Gary Lyman, an oncologist and health outcomes researcher at the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center, said in a Duke news release. "We know that some therapies are more promising and effective, in general, than others, and cost variation raises many questions about what kind of care patients are receiving and whether this economic burden is matched by significant clinical advancements, especially with regard to quality of life."
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