Cost-benefit analysis in patients with cancer (esophagus, gastric) in North Khorasan Province

Abstract

The word cancer is derived from the Latin word carcinoma, means crab and refers to a malignant tumor that is caused by abnormal growth of a cell or group of cells. Since the operating time of manpower is a major investment for community, time lost due to premature death or non-fatal consequences of illnesses, and various events and accidents have become as the most important criterion to measure the health level. The present study is experimental and in terms of the nature and method is descriptive-survey. A sample of patients with gastric and esophageal cancer was studied in North Khorasan in 2012 and 2013. In this study, the methods of descriptive statistics such as frequency distribution tables, percentage and mean, standard deviation, minimum and maximum values​​ and quartiles were used to evaluate and compare the data collected from the medical documents and also in inferential statistic sector (according to the confirmed data normality), the independent two-sample t-test was used. In this regard, factors affecting the cost-benefit such as the medical expenses, indirect costs of treatment, average financial interests after treatment, support of contracting organizations and assessment of treatment costs for early detection were examined in this study. As it was predicted, records of patients with cancer have been responsible for all the research hypotheses All hypotheses were confirmed by the difference in the amount of costs and among these factors, early prevention and timely diagnosis were very helpful in improvement of patients and had very low cost for the patient and the Department of Health. Furthermore, financial support of insurances is relatively low that the enhancement of heavy costs for patients in addition to the tolerance of disease leading to the stopping continued treatment.