Statistics indicate that every year over 180,000 men have been diagnosed with prostate cancer, which is one of the most common cancer diseases in the country.
The latest research from the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center (DF/BWCC) reveals that new and highly expensive treatments for prostate cancer were accepted and implemented quickly and widely during the years 2002-2005 without any verification and proof of their effectiveness. This may be the explanation for why health care would account for 17% of the GDP of the nation. This research would be published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in the near future, and it has already been published online on March 14th.
Dr. Paul Nguyen, a radiation oncologist at the DF/BWCC, and the lead author of the study reveals that it was essential to carefully take notice of the how money is being spent, in an era of limited resources. He says that all over the US it has been seen that more expensive and modern technologies such as robotic surgery were being quickly implemented regardless of their cost or the benefits they would provide, when compared to standard treatments. The researchers had studied the cost and the usage of radiation and surgical treatments for prostate cancer with the help of Medicare linked data from over 45,000 men whose ages were above 65 years, between the years 2002-2005. The data had been obtained from patients who had received two types of treatments; the new robotic or laparoscopic prostatectomy and the older open radical prostatectomy with two different radiation treatments, the new IMRT (intensity-modulated radiation therapy) and the 3D-CRT (conformal radiation therapy).
Research reports indicate that in 2002, 1.5% of the patients had opted for robotic surgery or laparoscopic prostatectomy, which had increased to 28.7% in 2005 and this was also found to be the case for patients who received radiation therapy. IMRT was given to 28.7% men in 2002 whereas in 2005, 81.7% of the patients received IMRT. Also for those patients who had taken brachytherapy, supplemental IMRT grew from 8.5% in 2002 to 31.1% in 2005. These patients were generally from the metros and were from the higher income group with the disease in the early stages and were of Asian descent. They were spending almost $11,000 per patient for the modern methods, when compared to the $293, which was the cost of open radical prostatectomy treatment.
Nguyen clarifies that this research was not being anti-technology and was not against new and better treatments being used. However, the benefits obtained over open procedure were still uncertain. In the case of IMRT, it had proved to reduce the rate of serious rectal bleeding, which occurs after prostate radiation but the proof that this treatment was cost-effective was published only in 2006, when more than 80% of the country was already making use of it. Uncertainty prevails over the benefits of robotic surgery over the open procedure. Funds for the research were provided by the JCRT Foundation and the Department of Defense.