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Guadagno di sopravvivenza dei nuovi farmaci

Survival gain with new drugs

  • Published:
PharmacoEconomics Italian Research Articles

Summary

Objective

Since the so-called survival gain is recognised to be a parameter that quantifies the magnitude of the therapeutic benefit of new treatments, our study is aimed at reviewing the literature on this parameter published over the past years.

Methods

To select the pertinent articles, we conducted a literature search using MEDLINE (PubMed version). We utilised the key word “survival analysis” (as a Mesh term) with the following limits: a) publication date from 2001 to 2002, b) “randomized controlled trial”, c) “only items with abstracts”, d) “English”; e) “human”. We identified all the studies that reported the value of median survival for both treatments groups. In addition, for the clinical studies that did not explicitly report this parameter, we conducted a separate literature search to verify if a cost-effectiveness analysis could be found wherein the “mean survival gain” of the new treatment had been calculated in comparison to the standard drug. Irrespective of their source, the value of survival gain were finally tabulated and arranged by decreasing order.

Results

Twenty-nine articles were included in our study. From these articles, we extracted the value of median survival gain in 28 cases and the value of mean survival gain in one case; 27 studies evaluated anti-cancer drugs, whereas two considered treatments aimed at other disease conditions. The survival gain ranged from some months per patient (for the majority of therapies) up to a maximum of 84 months per patient; the latter value of survival gain was obtained for all-trans retinoic acid in the treatment of acute promyelocytic leukemia. With regard to disease conditions other than cancer, we found a survival gain of 6 months per patient for activated protein C in the treatment of severe sepsis.

Conclusion

Our study tabulated the survival gain for a variety of recent medical interventions. According to our findings, the typical value of survival gain for new treatments (with the exception of all-trans retinoic acid) is in the range of some months per patient. This confirms the results presented in a previous analysis focused on the literature of the’ 90s.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratorio SIFO di Farmacoeconomia, Azienda Ospedaliera Careggi, Firenze, Italia

    Andrea Messori, B. Santarlasci & S. Trippoli

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  1. Andrea Messori
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  2. B. Santarlasci
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  3. S. Trippoli
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Messori, A., Santarlasci, B. & Trippoli, S. Guadagno di sopravvivenza dei nuovi farmaci. Pharmacoeconomics-Ital-Res-Articles 6, 95–104 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03320627

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