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For Release: October 23, 2000
Radiation Therapy is a Less-Costly Treatment for Prostate Cancer
In the fight against early-stage prostate cancer, radiation therapy is significantly less expensive than radical prostatectomy for primary curative treatment, researchers have found.
A nationwide examination of 16,941 patients over the age of 65 diagnosed with localized prostate cancer revealed that Medicare payments for radical prostatectomy were consistently at least 16 percent greater than those covering radiation therapy.
For patients who received radiation therapy alone, the cost was $10,047; the cost was $13,841 for patients treated with radical prostatectomy alone.
The difference still existed when patients treated with combination therapy were also reviewed. For one group of these patients, which included those who were treated with radiation therapy plus prostate surgery other than radical prostatectomy, as well as those patients treated with radiation therapy alone, the average cost was $11,226. For another group of patients, which included those patients treated with radical prostatectomy followed by radiation therapy plus those patients treated with radical prostatectomy alone, the cost was $13,952.
The study's primary author, Jeffrey Burkhardt, Ph.D., of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL, stresses that the study analyzed differences in cost, not medical efficacy.
"The study did not focus on which is the better treatment," he says. "But from a financial standpoint, it's less costly to treat a patient with radiation therapy than with radical prostatectomy."
The study was based on the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER)-Medicare database for the years 1992 and 1993. Medicare payments were calculated for the initial treatment interval - one month prior to diagnosis and six months following diagnosis.
Costs were looked at again after adjustments were made to correct for differences in age and comorbidity between the groups. These adjustments yielded even larger differences in treatment costs, according to Dr. Burkhardt.
The study was presented October 23 at the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology annual meeting in Boston, MA.
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