Assistant Professor Daiya Shimamoto, Professor Taku Iwami, and Professor Takeo Nakayama of the Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, and a joint research group of Kyoto City, AstraZeneca, and Healthtech Research Institute, have conducted a post-treatment study of patients with newly-onset non-small cell lung cancer. When the survival rate of the patients was examined, it was found that the survival rate was higher after surgery.The total cost of subsequent treatment was cheaper for surgery, and finding and treating it at an operable stage not only improved the survival rate, but also reduced the public burden of medical expenses.
According to Kyoto University, the research group took about 2,600 people from the medical database owned by Kyoto City, divided them into about 1,000 who had surgery and about 1,600 who had drug or radiotherapy, and determined the five-year survival rate. And a follow-up survey of the medical expenses incurred up to four years later.
They found that the five-year survival rate was 5% in the group whose initial treatment was surgery, compared with less than 75% in the group treated with drugs or radiation.Many of the patients in the group who underwent drug or radiotherapy were judged to be too old to tolerate the surgery, but the research group believes that this suggests that the surgery produced good results.
The median total cost of treatment was about 6 million yen for the group that underwent surgery six months after the start of treatment, and about 240 million yen for the group that underwent drug or radiotherapy. The difference widened to about 295 million yen for the group who received drug or radiotherapy compared to the yen, making it clear that surgery is cheaper from the perspective of public expenditure on medical expenses.
