The Adverse Side Effects and High Costs of Chemotherapy: A Case Study on Breast Cancer
According to a new study published in the August 16 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, breast cancer patients aged 63 years or younger may experience more chemotherapy-related serious adverse effects than reported in clinical trials.
Such were the findings of researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School that studied 7,052 women from a database of claims made to health plans that contract with large employers in the United States.
The study, led by Michael J. Hassett, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber, studied a database of medical claims made by women with newly diagnosed breast cancer who had employer-provided health insurance between January 1998 and December 2002.
“This is the first study, to our knowledge, of chemotherapy-related serious adverse effects in a population-based sample of younger women with breast cancer,” said Hassett, who is also an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School.
“We found that eight chemotherapy-related serious adverse effects may be more common than reported in large clinical trials, and, therefore, these adverse effects may be responsible for more patient suffering and higher health care expenditures than currently predicted.”
Chemotherapy is often prescribed by doctors to eliminate residual cancer cells in women who have undergone surgery for breast cancer. However, these women who received chemotherapy were more likely to be hospitalized or visit emergency rooms for problems that are typically related to chemotherapy: fever or infection, low white blood cell or platelet count, nausea, diarrhea, malnutrition, or dehydration.
According to this study that was funded by grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Institutes of Health, on top of more incidents of chemotherapy-related adverse effects, women undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer also experienced increased healthcare costs: $1,271 more per year for hospitalizations and emergency room visits and $17,617 more per year for ambulatory care than women who did not receive chemotherapy.
Source: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute News and JNCI Article
Tags: breast-cancer, cancer, chemotherapyRelated Stories
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