iCAD is touting a study that found intraoperative radiation therapy (IORT) could directly save the U.S. healthcare system more than $630 million over the lifetime of patients diagnosed annually with early-stage breast cancer.
The study, published online November 9 in Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation, compared IORT with external-beam radiation therapy (EBRT) and found that IORT could significantly benefit patients' health by minimizing radiation exposure and result in a better quality of life.
Study co-authors Dr. Olga Ivanov, a surgeon at Florida Hospital in Orlando, and Dr. Rakesh Patel, a radiation oncologist at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Gatos, CA, both use iCAD's Xoft Axxent electronic brachytherapy device in their practices.
The researchers used data gleaned from peer-reviewed literature to compare the use of IORT with six-week, whole-breast radiation therapy in treating early-stage breast cancer. Some of the key findings are listed below:
- The direct cost of care over the life of a patient was $53,179 for IORT, compared with $63,828 for EBRT, which translates into an annual cost savings of more than $10,500 per patient.
- Based on more than 60,000 new cases of early-stage breast cancer diagnosed per year, annual cost savings associated with IORT could total more than $630 million.
- Quality assessment of life years for IORT was higher (17.8) than for EBRT (17.06).
- EBRT also exposed patients to four times more radiation than IORT.
