Cost effectiveness and other assessments of adjuvant therapies for early breast cancer.

The 1992 metaanalysis of adjuvant therapies after surgery in early breast cancer summarizes the most extensively studied of all cancer treatments via randomized controlled trials. This study found overall benefits with use of adjuvant therapies, and their expanded use outside the clinical trial setting was assumed to be effective and implied to be cost effective. Thus, the primary remaining questions are which form of adjuvant therapy to use and how to identify which patients are unlikely to benefit. In British Columbia, the effectiveness of adjuvant therapy outside the clinical trial setting was reassuringly similar to the metaanalysis efficacy. Our decision analysis model of hypothetical cohorts of women with early breast cancer confirmed that the efficacy of adjuvant treatment is the primary determinate of its incremental cost effectiveness. Future cost-effectiveness and quality of life assessments should move from hypothetical cohorts assessed via models to prospective data collected within clinical trials or integrated health delivery system.