ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands—Controlling the rising costs of colorectal cancer treatments can be achieved through the use of cancer screening programs, according to a new study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
To examine whether colorectal cancer screening would become cost saving with the use of more expensive chemotherapies, researchers used the MISCAN-Colon microsimulation model and considered three scenarios for chemotherapy use—the past, the present, and the near future. They looked at annual guaiac fecal occult blood testing (FOBT), annual immunochemical FOBT, sigmoidoscopy every five years, colonoscopy every 10 years, and the combination of sigmoidoscopy every five years and annual guaiac FOBT.
Researchers found the treatment savings from screening were more than twice as high in the near-future scenario, which included the widespread use of expensive new chemotherapies, than in the past scenario for all test strategies.
“The increasingly costly management of colorectal cancer will approximately double the treatment savings from screening,” the authors wrote. “Screening is not only desirable from the perspective of governments and insurance companies to reduce colorectal cancer incidence and mortality, but in addition will also help to contain the increasing costs for the management of colorectal cancer.”