Lundkvist et al 2005
Acta oncologica (Stockholm, Sweden) · 2005 · Sweden · Proton
The figures it reported
- €10,130 per QALY gainedaverage over the four cancers
- €34,290 per QALY gainedleft-sided breast cancer (Table II)
- €26,776 per QALY gainedprostate cancer (Table II)
- €3,811 per QALY gainedhead and neck cancer (Table II)
- cost saving dominant (−€23,646.5 cost, +0.683 QALY per patient)childhood medulloblastoma (Table II)Dominant: cheaper and more effective than the comparator, so there is no ratio to quote.
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
- Simulated patients with left-sided breast cancer, prostate cancer, head and neck cancer, and childhood medulloblastoma; 925 patients treated per year across the four cancers
- Comparator
- Conventional radiation therapy
- Indication
- left-sided breast cancer; prostate cancer; head and neck cancer; childhood medulloblastoma
- Study design
- Cost-utility analysis; Markov cohort simulation model for each cancer type; outcome cost per QALY
- Time horizon
- From diagnosis until death or 100 years of age
- Delivery technique
- not reported by this study
- Perspective
- not reported by this study
- Currency
- EUR (€)
- Price year
- 2002 (€1 = 9.2 SEK; costs updated with the Swedish consumer price index)
- Willingness-to-pay threshold
- €55,000 per QALY
- Discount rate
- 3% annually, costs and effects
- Cost of the particle course assumed
- not reported by this study
- Cost of the comparator assumed
- not reported by this study
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
Proton therapy cost-effective if appropriate risk groups are chosen
Capital cost assumption
- What it assumed
- Large investment costs for building a proton therapy facility (no figure stated)
- Where that figure came from
- not reported by this study
Reporting quality
82 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.