“To understand the costs related to the weight of cancer patients we must start from the costs of the disease in an advanced stage, which are mainly linked to drugs such as immunotherapy and precision drugs. The cost of a screening program is based on the cost of a low-dose spiral CT scan is approximately 40 euros. In this way, a disease can be diagnosed in an early stage, therefore operable and therefore potentially curable”. This was stated by Silvia Novello, full professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Turin and head of Medical Oncology at the San Luigi di Orbassano University Hospital, speaking this morning in Rome at the presentation of the budget of the program of the Italian Lung Screening Network (Risp) .
The prevention and early diagnosis of lung cancer, underlines the expert, is beneficial not only to the patient in terms of survival, but also to the public health service. To treat lung cancer “we arrive at an average annual cost of around 52 or 55 thousand euros for drugs alone – Novello highlights – to which obviously all expenses relating to palliative care and the commitment of human resources must be added”.
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