Lundkvist et al 2005
Radiotherapy and oncology : journal of the European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology · 2005 · Sweden · Proton
The figures it reported
- 67,000 Euro per QALY gainedBase case, average breast cancer patient
Figures are shown exactly as the paper gives them, in its own currency and price year. We do not convert between currencies: see the glossary for why.
- Patients modelled or enrolled
- Hypothetical 55-year-old women with left-sided breast cancer treated with radiation (Markov cohort simulation)
- Comparator
- Conventional radiation therapy
- Indication
- Breast cancer (left-sided)
- Study design
- Cost-utility analysis; Markov cohort simulation model; outcome measure cost per QALY gained
- Time horizon
- Simulation runs from diagnosis until death or 100 years of age (effectively remaining lifetime)
- Delivery technique
- not reported by this study
- Perspective
- Societal
- Currency
- EUR
- Price year
- EUR 2002 values (1 EUR = 9.2 SEK), updated using the Swedish consumer price index
- Willingness-to-pay threshold
- not reported by this study
- Discount rate
- 3% annually in the base case (costs and effects)
- Cost of the particle course assumed
- EUR 11,101 per patient (proton radiation cost, Table 1)
- Cost of the comparator assumed
- EUR 4,239 per patient (conventional radiation cost, Table 1)
Whose costs were counted: a payer, a hospital, or society as a whole.
The year the costs are expressed in. Without it, a figure cannot be compared across time.
The condition attached to the finding
Conclusion that proton therapy can be cost-effective if appropriate risk groups (high risk of cardiac disease) are chosen as targets; base case cost per QALY is 67,000 Euro for an average patient and considerably lower for high-cardiac-risk populations.
Capital cost assumption
- What it assumed
- Large investment cost of building a proton therapy facility mentioned qualitatively; no value stated
- Where that figure came from
- not reported by this study
Reporting quality
92 out of 100 on the Quality of Health Economic Studies instrument, a 16-item checklist covering the objective, the perspective, the sources of each estimate, the handling of uncertainty, the horizon and discounting, how costs were measured, the model's transparency, the discussion of bias, and whether funding was disclosed. It measures how well the study was reported, not whether its conclusion is correct: a well-reported study can still reach a conclusion a later trial overturns.