Ablation of small renal cancer associated with “significantly lower costs” than either partial or radical nephrectomy
Adam Talenfeld, M.D.
For older patients with small (T1a) renal cancer, percutaneous ablation is associated with much lower costs than partial or radical nephrectomy, both at the time of treatment and through the first year after treatment, new research has shown.
The economic analysis of percutaneous ablation vs. surgery for small renal cancers, was presented at the World Conference on Interventional Oncology (WCIO, 9–12 June 2016, Boston, USA). The research was undertaken by investigators in New York, Madison and Seattle in the USA.
“Percutaneous thermal ablation is a minimally-invasive, nephron-sparing alternative to partial nephrectomy or radical nephrectomy for some patients with small renal cancers. Our objective was to compare costs associated with each procedure through the first year after treatment in a population-based cohort of older adults,” said Adam D Talenfeld, an interventional radiologist in Weill Cornell Medicine, at WCIO.
The investigators used a Medicare dataset to identify patients aged 66 years or older who received ablation, radical nephrectomy or partial nephrectomy within six months of diagnosis of a clinically-staged T1a renal cancer in the period 2006 to 2011.
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There were 460, 1,626 and 2,336 patients treated with ablation, partial nephrectomy and radical nephrectomy, respectively. They found that median treatment costs were $4,265, $14,412 and $14,710 for ablation, partial nephrectomy and radical nephrectomy, respectively. Median cumulative costs at 365 days post-procedure were $12,590, $21,702 and $23,063.
“Controlling for demographic and disease characteristics, both treatment costs and one-year costs were significantly lower for patients treated with ablation compared to either partial nephrectomy or radical nephrectomy (p<0.0001),” Talenfeld said.
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Talenfeld and colleagues concluded: “From the payer perspective, ablation for older patients with T1a renal cancer is associated with significantly lower costs than partial nephrectomy or radical nephrectomy, both at the time of treatment and through the first year after treatment.”
They further concluded that in well-selected patients with small tumours, ablation may be a less costly alternative to surgery.
This is an excerpt of an article first appeared in Interventional News. Read the full story here.