Photodynamic therapy for Barrett's esophagus with high-grade dysplasia: a cost-effectiveness analysis

To assess the cost-effectiveness of photodynamic therapy (PDT) and esophagectomy (ESO) relative to surveillance (SURV) for patients with Barrett's esophagus (BE) and high-grade dysplasia (HGD).

A Markov decision tree was constructed to estimate costs and health outcomes of PDT, ESO and SURV in a hypothetical cohort of male patients, 50 years of age, with BE and HGD. Outcomes included unadjusted life-years (LYs) and quality-adjusted LYs (QALYs). Direct medical costs (2003 CDN$) were measured from the perspective of a provincial ministry of health. The time horizon for the model was five years (cycle length three months), and costs and outcomes were discounted at 3%. Model parameters were assigned unique distributions, and a probabilistic analysis with 10,000 Monte Carlo simulations was performed.

SURV was the least costly strategy, followed by PDT and ESO, but SURV was also the least effective. In terms of LYs, the incremental cost-effectiveness ratios were 814 dollars/LY for PDT versus SURV and 3,397 dollars/LY for ESO versus PDT. PDT dominated ESO for QALYs in the base-case. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of PDT versus SURV was 879 dollars/QALY. In probabilistic analysis, PDT was most likely to be cost-effective at willingness-to-pay (WTP) values between 100 dollars/LY and 3,500 dollars/LY, and ESO was most likely to be cost-effective for WTP values over 3500 dollars/LY. For quality-adjusted survival, PDT was most likely to be cost-effective for all WTP thresholds above 1,000 dollars/QALY. The likelihood that PDT was the most cost-effective strategy reached 0.99 at a WTP ceiling of 25,000 dollars/QALY.

In male patients with BE and HGD, PDT and ESO are cost-effective alternatives to SURV.