Research shows rapid adoption of newer, more expensive prostate cancer treatments
Monday, March 14, 2011 - 16:30
in Health & Medicine
With 180,000 men diagnosed with prostate cancer each year, it is one of the most common types of cancer in the country. For this reason, it has been cited as a good marker for health care spending in general, reflective of the greater trends across the United States. New research from the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center (DF/BWCC) shows that newer, more expensive treatment options for prostate cancer were adopted rapidly and widely during 2002 2005 without proof of their cost-effectiveness, and may offer explanations for why health care spending accounts for 17 percent of the nation's GDP. This research is published online March 14 and will appear in an upcoming print edition of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.