An Attempt to Quantitate "Value" In Medical Oncologic Therapy.

Objective We wanted to examine the incremental cost-effective ratio (ICER) for a variety of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved oncology drugs in the adjuvant or curative setting to determine the value provided. Design We examined the annualized incremental drug costs of a variety of FDA approved chemotherapeutic drugs used in an adjuvant or curative setting based on National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) category 1 practice guidelines for melanoma, Her2/neu over-expressive breast cancer, renal cell carcinoma, stage IIIA non-small cell lung cancer, myeloma, B cell lymphoma, and Hodgkin lymphoma. The studies we examined were randomized clinical trials on which the NCCN guidelines are based; we solely examined the incremental cost-effectiveness of the trial drug as we assumed that the costs of the health care provided were equivalent between the two treatment arms.