Pharmacoeconomic aspects in the treatment of curable and incurable cancer

Assessments of the direct and indirect costs of cancer treatment have demonstrated the extreme complexity of these costs. Expenditure on cancer treatment is high, often reaching 3 to 6% of the gross national product in industrialised countries. In this article, we propose that the health outcomes associated with this high expenditure should be analysed in relation to concepts such as total cytoreduction (leading to disease-free survival and cure) and cytostabilisation with acceptable quality of life (in incurable cancer patients). Outcomes appear to be more variable among incurable compared with curable patients, so that cure and survival (which apply to only about 50% of all patients) are not the sole outcome parameters. For the 50% of patients in industrialised countries in whom cure is not possible, outcomes (in the form of cytostabilisation and an ongoing obligation to seek curative cytoreduction) will require further pharmacoeconomic assessment.