The Economics of Using Locally Ablative Therapy in Oligometastatic Cancer

Locally ablative therapy for oligometastatic cancers can improve clinical outcomes in some settings, but the interventional procedures used will also add expense to the overall cost of care for individual patients. The physician's responsibility to be a thoughtful steward of health care resources obliges evaluations of the cost-effectiveness of local therapy when used in an effort to prolong duration of survival or improve quality of life in patients with metastatic cancer. The challenge for investigators in this domain is to capture appropriate prospective data that can inform proper patient selection and identify the conditions in which locally ablative therapy for oligometastatic cancer provides high value care.