Metastatic Prostate Cancer: Quality of Life and Cost Considerations

Spiraling health care costs have prompted great interest in evaluating the pharmacoeconomics of all medical treatments [1]. As a result of careful analyses, it has been suggested that the most cost-effective approach to therapy may not necessarily be the least expensive but rather the one that provides the best clinical outcome. Length of hospitalization and incidence of adverse effects or disease complications all exert a major influence on the cost-effectiveness of management strategies. This type of pharmacoeconomic treatment evaluation is particularly important in the case of the critically ill, who typically require longer hospital stays and more intensive treatments than other patients.