Is BRCA Mutation Testing Cost Effective for Early Stage Breast Cancer Patients Compared to Routine Clinical Surveillance? The Case of an Upper Middle-Income Country in Asia
Abstract
Objective
Previous studies showed that offering BRCA mutation testing to population subgroups at high risk of harbouring the mutation may be cost effective, yet no evidence is available for low- or middle-income countries (LMIC) and in Asia. We estimated the cost effectiveness of BRCA mutation testing in early-stage breast cancer patients with high pre-test probability of harbouring the mutation in Malaysia, an LMIC in Asia.
Methods
We developed a decision analytic model to estimate the lifetime costs and quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) accrued through BRCA mutation testing or routine clinical surveillance (RCS) for a hypothetical cohort of 1000 early-stage breast cancer patients aged 40 years. In the model, patients would decide whether to accept testing and to undertake risk-reducing mastectomy, oophorectomy, tamoxifen, combinations or neither. We calculated the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) from the health system perspective. A series of sensitivity analyses were performed.
Results
In the base case, testing generated 11.2 QALYs over the lifetime and cost US$4815 per patient whereas RCS generated 11.1 QALYs and cost US$4574 per patient. The ICER of US$2725/QALY was below the cost-effective thresholds. The ICER was sensitive to the discounting of cost, cost of BRCA mutation testing and utility of being risk-free, but the ICERs remained below the thresholds. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis showed that at a threshold of US$9500/QALY, 99.9% of simulations favoured BRCA mutation testing over RCS.
Conclusions
Offering BRCA mutation testing to early-stage breast cancer patients identified using a locally-validated risk-assessment tool may be cost effective compared to RCS in Malaysia.
Notes
Data Availability Statement
All data used in the analyses are referenced and described in the text and listed in Supplementary File 2. All other information is available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.
Author Contributions
SYY, SHT and NC conceptualized the research idea; KKL and NC formulated the research questions, and designed and performed the analysis; NAMT, YLW and MKT assisted in model building by providing their clinical inputs, FHS and MD provided secondary data on resource consumption, and assisted in data analysis and interpretation of findings. KKL prepared the first draft of the manuscript. All authors were responsible for critically revising the manuscript and agreed on the final content before submission.
Compliance with Ethical Standards
Funding
No funding was involved for this study.
Human or animal rights
This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.
Conflict of interest
All authors (KKL, SYY, NAMT, FHS, MD, YLW, MKT, SHT, NC) declare no conflicts of interest related to BRCA mutation testing.
Supplementary material
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