Loay Kassem: Study conducted in Egypt shows the cost-effectiveness of KEYNOTE-522 in early TNBC
Loay Kassem, Assistant Professor of clinical oncology at Kasr AlAiny School of Medicine, Cairo University, shared a recent article on LinkedIn:
“Can we afford to spend 450,000 EGP to treat One patient with triple negative breast cancer?
It might look like we can’t. However, the right way to answer is by conducting a cost effectiveness study.
This study wouldn’t check whether the drug is working or not (this is already proven) and wouldn’t check if this reduction of mortality is valuable for the patient or the community (because only one life saved is priceless).
The study simply asks one question. If the payer (or the government) spent this amount of money, would this result in a profit for the economy?
Yes. Treating patients from serious conditions saves money for governments (not only lives).
This happens through reduction of the future expenses to treat metastatic disease and terminal illness.
In addition, it also increases the financial productivity of the cured patient by icreasing what we call Quality adjusted life years.
That’s exactly what we did with the help of a great team led by Gihan Hamdy Elsisi, Msc, PhD Bernadette Pöllinger, PhD Ahmed Hassan abdelaziz.
We conducted a study to test if spending money on immunotherapy for patients with early high risk TNBCs is profitable or not in the Egyptian economic status.
We found that adding pembrolizumab led to an expected gain of 2.92 life years and 2.25 quality-adjusted life years, respectively.
I am excited that our study is finally published in Journal of medical economics.
I invite you to read our publication for more details.”
Authors: Bernadette Pöllinger, Amin Haiderali, Min Huang, Burcu Akyol Ersoy, Ahmed H Abdelaziz, Loay Kassem and Gihan Hamdy Elsisi
Malak Alharbi, Hematology Oncology Fellow at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, also shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Important study conducted in Egypt shows the cost-effectiveness of KEYNOTE-522 in early triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).
Pembrolizumab adds 2.92 life years and 2.25 QALYs at EGP 168,223 ($35,046)/life year.
A game-changer for cancer care in Egypt and LMICs.”
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