Patients With Advanced Stages of Melanoma Face Higher Health Care Costs
Source: Cure Today, October 2023
Higher health care costs were found to affect patients with stages 2 to 4 melanoma, according to a recent study.
Specifically, the study from JAMA Network determined that there was an increase in mean per-person health care costs over time, which was mainly because of the expensive treatments, including immunotherapies and targeted systemic therapies, for patients with advanced and metastatic melanoma in Ontario, Canada.
“Melanoma is a kind of cancer that you can develop on your skin. It is typically associated with sun exposure, sunburns or other forms of (ultraviolet) exposure, such as historic use of tanning beds in earlier days of life, and results in a cancer that that grows on the skin that’s often pigmented or colored — often a dark color — and can occur almost anywhere in the body,” said Dr. Timothy Hanna during an interview with CURE®. “It’s a cancer that is typically treated with surgery, but also in in some cases with radiation, and sometimes for people with more advanced stages of disease with drug therapy.”