Use of the Monoclonal Antibody Anti-HER2 Trastuzumab in the Treatment of Metastatic Breast Cancer

Abstract

The related additional cost seems affordable for an European health care system and justifies the recommendation for its use in the subpopulation overexpressing HER2.

Cost-effectiveness of trastuzumab in metastatic breast cancer: Mainly a matter of price in the EU?

“…Accordingly, both the Scandinavian FEEs can be criticized, the former [23] for underestimating and the latter [24] for overestimating the OS induced by TR. In contrast, the two French FEEs [25,26] overemphasized TR efficacy, sourcing data from weak observational studies based on very small samples.…”

“…They did not specify the TR price. However, assuming an average length of treatment similar to the other French study [25] and taking account of the slightly larger OS, we estimated the price at D 706 in this study (7.7% more than reported in the EU survey).…”

“…The two studies reported larger OS gains for TR than those observed in CTs. Poncet and colleagues [25] estimated the median OS increase of TR at 17 months even without correcting for crossover. Moreover, although half the patients in the control group received TR after 6 months, the time horizon was limited to 24 weeks for costs.…”

“…We selected four FEEs conducted in the EU, focused on TR as a first-line innovative therapy in MBC [23][24][25][26]. Two studies were from Scandinavia, the other two from France, all but one [23] concluding in favor of TR as a cost-effective therapy (Table 1).…”

“…To sum up, all the FEEs reviewed suffered from the intrinsic limits of TR clinical evidence in MBC discussed above and most of them [24][25][26] adopted arguable choices from a methodological point of view.…”