Sini Li1, Liubao Peng2, Chongqing Tan2, Xiaohui Zeng3, Xiaomin Wan1, Xia Luo2, Lidan Yi2, Jianhe Li2. 1. The Xiangya Nursing School, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China. 2. Department of Pharmacy, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China. 3. The Second Xiangya Hospital, PET-CT Center, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China.
Abstract
AIM: That clinical trial (RAINBOW) showed that a 7.4 months overall survival benefit with the combination therapy with ramucirumab (RAM) and paclitaxel (PAC) as second-line therapy for patients with recurrent or metastatic gastric or gastro-oesophageal junction adenocarcinoma, compared with placebo (PLA) plus paclitaxel. We performed an analysis to assess the cost-effectiveness of RAM from a Chinese perspective and recognized the range of drug costs. METHODS: By building a Markov model to estimate quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), life-years (LYs) and lifetime costs. Transition probabilities, costs and utilities were estimated for the published literature, Chinese health care system and local price setting. We performed threshold analyses and probabilistic sensitivity analyses to evaluate the uncertainty of the model. RESULTS: Compared with PLA strategy, RAM strategy provided an incremental survival benefit of 1.22 LYs and 0.64 QALYs. The probabilistic sensitivity analysis showed that when RAM costs less than $151 or $753 per 4 weeks, the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) approximated the willingness-to-pay threshold (WTP), suggesting that there was 50% likelihood that the ICER for RAM + PAC would be less than $44528.4 per QALY or $48121 per QALY, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: For patients with advanced gastric or gastro-oesophageal junction adenocarcinoma who fail first-line chemotherapy, our results are conducive to the multilateral drug price guidance negotiations of RAM in China.
RCT Entities:
AIM: That clinical trial (RAINBOW) showed that a 7.4 months overall survival benefit with the combination therapy with ramucirumab (RAM) and paclitaxel (PAC) as second-line therapy for patients with recurrent or metastatic gastric or gastro-oesophageal junction adenocarcinoma, compared with placebo (PLA) plus paclitaxel. We performed an analysis to assess the cost-effectiveness of RAM from a Chinese perspective and recognized the range of drug costs. METHODS: By building a Markov model to estimate quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), life-years (LYs) and lifetime costs. Transition probabilities, costs and utilities were estimated for the published literature, Chinese health care system and local price setting. We performed threshold analyses and probabilistic sensitivity analyses to evaluate the uncertainty of the model. RESULTS: Compared with PLA strategy, RAM strategy provided an incremental survival benefit of 1.22 LYs and 0.64 QALYs. The probabilistic sensitivity analysis showed that when RAM costs less than $151 or $753 per 4 weeks, the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) approximated the willingness-to-pay threshold (WTP), suggesting that there was 50% likelihood that the ICER for RAM + PAC would be less than $44528.4 per QALY or $48121 per QALY, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: For patients with advanced gastric or gastro-oesophageal junction adenocarcinoma who fail first-line chemotherapy, our results are conducive to the multilateral drug price guidance negotiations of RAM in China.