[Economic aspects of oncologic surgery: what do we know, are they relevant; must--may--we regard them?]

Economic aspects of medical care play an increasingly more important part in evaluation of diagnostics and therapeutics. Therefore it seems necessary to examine the present studies and their results carefully. In meta-analysis of cancer care, different techniques of economic analysis are used. Stage-specific analyses of direct costs in patients with colorectal neoplasms show a major influence of the stage at diagnosis on total costs of initial care. In contrast to this, increased age and increased comorbidity of patients did not function as a cost increasing factor in each stage of the disease. Net costs, that is attributable costs, are the difference between costs of the care of each subject and the average costs of controls. Net costs of continuing care decreased with age in patients with colorectal neoplasms. Cost-effectiveness analyses in patients with colon and breast cancers demonstrated lower medicare payments per year of survival for tumors diagnosed at earlier stages. From the date presented, no relevance of health economic aspects on individual planning of therapy can be deduced. Health economic aspects are appropriate in order to develop guidelines and are a basis of discussion at the level of macro-allocation. They can be used in the scope of a multi-dimensional evaluation of a new treatment and serve medical and therapeutic definitions of goals.