Catto - Figure 6
Where do we spend our resources?
FIG. 6: This Figure shows the distributions of urology healthcare costs vs mortality rates.[6-8] It is clear from the blue bars that the majority of budgets for managing patients with bladder cancer is spent on treating low-grade non-muscle invasive disease, with most of this applied to cystoscopy, intravesical treatment, and long-term recurrence surveillance of patients. Surveillance is expensive because it requires a doctor, endoscopy, nursing support, and time in hospital. In contrast, relatively little is spent proportionally on patients with advanced disease: there is a mismatch between heathcare spending (in blue) and mortality rates (in red), and the hope is that we can re-focus this.
References
Botteman MF, Pashos CL, Redaelli A, et al. The health economics of bladder cancer: a comprehensive review of the published literature. Pharmacoeconomics. 2003;21:1315–30 https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03262330
Avritscher EB, Cooksley CD, Grossman HB, et al. Clinical model of lifetime cost of treating bladder cancer and associated complications. Urology. 2006;68:549–53 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.urology.2006.03.062
Sangar VK, Ragavan N, Matanhelia SS, et al. The economic consequences of prostate and bladder cancer in the UK. BJU Int. 2005;95:59−63 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-410X.2005.05249.x
