COST-EFFECTIVNESS ANALYSIS OF QUADRIVALENT VACCINE FOR PREVENTION OF CERVICAL CANCER IN SERBIA
Abstract
Cervical cancer is second the most common cancer and the fourth cancer in relation to of mortality in women. As many as 85% of reported cases are found in developing countries, such as Serbia. The incidence of cervical cancer in Serbia is 24.3/100,000 women/year, and Serbia is among the countries with very high risk of cervical cancer. This study aims to show cost/effe-ctiveness of quadrivalent vaccine for the preven-tion of cervical cancer in Serbia.
Analysis was conducted using TreeAge software and Markov model was based on the literature data about effectiveness and on local Serbian cost calculation. The duration of one cycle was one year and the time horizon was set to 60 cycles i.e. 60 years. Monte Carlo simulation was done with 1000 virtual patients and sensitivity analysis (incoming variables varied ±50%) was presented by Tornado diagram.
Application of quadrivalent vaccine for the prevention of cervical cancer proved to be very cost/effective method. This method was cost-effective because costs were less than in the group that did not receive vaccine, and clinical efficacy in the vaccine group was slightly higher. After varying the incoming data for ±50%, the model remained stable, i.e. vaccine was still highly cost/effective.
This study showed that use of vaccine for prevention of cervical cancer was very cost/effe-ctive. However, since the vaccine was recently marketed, and studies investigating its effecti-veness longer than 5 years were not conducted, further studies are necessary to resolve question of long-term vaccine efficacy.
