• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.28-38
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• 2018

Purpose: To evaluate the medical expenditures for prostate cancer patients, including out-of-pocket costs, and compared the costs between androgen deprivation therapy and radical prostatectomy treatment. Methodology: This study combined clinical data from 357 prostate cancer patients from the Smart Prostate Cancer Database and the medical expenditure data from the claims and cost databases. We used the independent two-sample t-tests to compare androgen deprivation therapy and radical prostatectomy. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify determining factors for androgen deprivation therapy and radical prostatectomy treatments. Findings: The medical costs of androgen deprivation therapy treatment were much lower than radical prostatectomy treatment at the one year and remained lower until the fourth-year. However, after four years, the accumulated medical expenditures of androgen deprivation therapy become significantly higher than radical prostatectomy treatment. Patients with a higher cancer stage and older age had higher chances of being treated using androgen deprivation therapy treatment than radical prostatectomy treatment. Practical Implications: Our results show that early detection of cancer reduces the treatment cost for both patients and insurance payers. It also demonstrates that cost comparisons should be conducted over long periods of time in order to most accurately assess the costs.