Treatment Costs for Pediatrics Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia; Comparing Clinical Expenditures in Developed and Developing Countries: a Review Article

Background                                               Pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common, yet curable childhood malignancy within the pediatric cancers; but in most developed and developing countries cost of cancer treatment in children with ALL is high. So, we specified the range of expenses for the treatment of pediatric cancer and compared the results in developed and developing countries.Materials and MethodsTo evaluate treatment costs in childhood ALL, a review was taken place through published papers during the years 2000 to 2015. We searched multiple well known databases such as Medline, Scopus, ISI Web of Science and Google Scholar on January 2015 with "cost effectiveness", "cost utility", "cost minimization", "cost analysis", "economic evaluation", "childhood", "acute lymphoblastic leukemia", and "ALL" as our keywords.ResultsRegarding the reviewed evidence the essential result was that the total costs for treatment of pediatrics ALL in developing countries such as Asian countries were considerably lower than the costs reported from high income countries in Europe and North America. So different protocols were performed to treat ALL and this matter was significant due to the different durations of hospitalization.ConclusionAccording to the results, the total costs for treatment of pediatrics ALL in developing countries were considerably lower than the costs reported from high income countries.