Browsing by Subject "costs"

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in Finland. Health care costs increase annually and cost of cancer is significant to the society. Because resources are scarce more information is needed about the costs of diseases as well as treatment effectiveness. In addition to clinical effectiveness it is important to assess the value of healthcare technologies from the patient's point of view by measuring the treatment's effect on patients' quality of life. In this thesis a literature review was made on the following topics: cost of treating prostate cancer, prostate cancer patients' quality of life and cost-effectiveness of prostate cancer. The aim of the research was to determine what the drug costs are in relation to the total cost of treatment for prostate cancer in different stages of the disease and assess how the quality of life changes during the first year of treatment depending on the form of treatment. Drug costs were calculated from the health care payer's perspective in a six month cross-sectional study. The study population included a total of 629 prostate cancer patients treated in the Helsinki and Uudenmaa hospital district (HUS). The quality of life study population (N=367) was different of that used to calculate drug costs. The quality of life was measured according to an ongoing cost-effectiveness research at HUS. It was measured with 15D-instrument before receiving cancer treatment and three, six and twelve months after the beginning of treatment. Drug costs in relation to the total cost of prostate cancer treatment were significant. In patients with meta-static cancer drugs were 53 % of the total cost of cancer treatment. In remission patients the total costs of cancer treatment were the lowest compared to other diseases stages, but drug costs were still 30 % of the total costs. For patients receiving palliative treatment, local or relapse cancer patients, and patients whose cancer was just diagnosed, the total drug costs were 19%, 13% and 0%, respectively. Policlinic visits and policlinic procedures were also a significant cause of the total costs. Quality of life of prostate cancer patients is incredibly good compared to age-standardized population. However the patients' quality of life decreases statistically and clinically significantly during the first year of treatment. Before treatment 15D score was 0,91 and after 12 months it was 0,88. When assessed in different treatment groups the quality of life decreased the least in patients treated with waiting. The largest statistically significant change occurred in patients treated with radiation. The strength of the study is that the costs were calculated per patient according to real resource use. The study also had limitations. The costs of primary care were not included in the calculations. Also cancer related pain medication, depression and erectile dysfunction drugs should be included in the drug costs. The follow-up time of measuring quality of life was too short. In the future it would be important to study the cost-effectiveness of medication as well as the cost-effectiveness of the different forms of treatment in prostate cancer.

Inflammatory bowel diseases are among the fastest growing chronic disease of young people in Europe and they are increasing in Western countries for unknown reasons. Illness often occurs at a young age and the symptoms persist generally throughout life, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are the most common diseases in this category. Inflammatory bowel diseases often cause persistent symptoms and require treatment usually for life, affect the quality of life and the ability to go to work. Conventional treatment usually consists of anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive drug therapy or surgical intervention. In difficult cases, the biologic drug treatment is used. New biological drug products (TNF-blockers) have improved, in particular in Crohn's disease, a response to treatment. The aim of this study is to provide information about the effectiveness and the costs of the biological treatment in inflammatory bowel diseases. The main results presented are the changes of the quality of life during the observation period measured with the generic and disease-specific HRQoL instruments. The results are also reported on the matter of costs for quality-adjusted life-years gained during the follow-up period. The study consists of FinnIBDQ (inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire) survey (n=2831) and the follow-up survey of the patients who used biologic drug products (n=189). Patients were selected into the follow-up if they reported using the biologic drugs to treat the illness. FinnIBDQ-survey was conducted in 2006/2008 and follow-up questionnaire in 2011. As a generic HRQoL instrument was the 15D-instrument used which is a standardized measure of the health related quality of life. 15D-instrument produces a single index number between 0-1. IBDQ is a disease-specific HRQoL instrument, which consists of 32 questions. The total number of points varies between 32 and 224 from the worst to the best. Patients' medical history, symptoms, medication and health care use were studied in their own partition on the questionnaire. Biological drug therapy group belonged at the baseline (n=148) improved the quality of life (p=0.004) during the follow-up. A disease-specific HRQoL instrument (IBDQ) shows the quality of life has changed in parallel (p=0.003)with the 15D-instrument. Dimensions, where progress was achieved (p<0.05) were the elimination, the usual activities, discomfort and symptoms, as well as vitality and sexual activity. In the research group (n=51), the average cost per patient per QALYs gained during the follow-up period proved to be very high, at over 5 million euro's. During this time, the patient gained an average of 0,01 quality adjusted additional years of life. The evidence of the long-term impact of the biologic drug treatment on the patient's quality of life is still scarce. In most of the research concerned with the benefits of biological treatment, the effectiveness data is derived from the pharmaceutical manufacturers' short-term clinical efficacy studies, or taken from any other quality of life studies.