Clinical, economic and humanistic burdens of skeletal-related events associated with bone metastases

Abstract

Despite effective skeletal-related event (SRE)-limiting therapies such as zoledronic acid and denosumab, SREs continue to place a meaningful burden on patients, providers and payers. However, studies of SRE-related effects on clinical (i.e., survival), economic (i.e., cost per event) and humanistic (i.e., quality of life) outcomes often report results in a composite manner and frequently do not differentiate the effects by SRE-type (i.e., bone radiation, bone surgery, hypercalcemia, pathological fracture and spinal cord compression). Nevertheless, understanding the differential burdens of individual SRE types, which vary in severity and duration of effect, is an important consideration – particularly in pharmacoeconomic evaluations of SRE-limiting therapies. In this review of the clinical, economic and humanistic SRE burden, it was found that SRE types can be differentiated by these outcomes, although economic outcomes are far more frequently reported than clinical or humanistic.

Keywords::

• bone metastases
• cost
• quality of life
• skeletal-related events
• survival
• utility

Financial & competing interests disclosure

JA Carter, X Ji and MF Botteman received a consulting fee from Novartis Pharmaceuticals related to the development of this manuscript. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

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