• Chia-Ni Lin, Kuo-Ting Lee, Sheng-Mao Chang, and Jung-Der Wang.
• Department of Public Health, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan.
• J Formos Med Assoc. 2022 Mar 1; 121 (3): 633-642.

Background/PurposeWe estimated loss-of-life expectancy (LE) and lifetime medical expenditures (LME) stratified by stages to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of breast cancer (BC) screening in Taiwan.MethodsWe interlinked four national databases- Cancer Registry, Mortality Registry, National Health Insurance Claim, and Mammography Screening. A cohort of 123,221 BC was identified during 2002-2015 and followed until December 31, 2017. We estimated LE and loss-of-LE by rolling extrapolation algorithm using age-, sex-, and calendar-year-matched referents simulated from vital statistics. LME was estimated by multiplying monthly cost with survival probability and adjusted for annual discount rate. We calculated incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) by comparing the loss-of-LE of those detected by screening versus non-screening after accounting for administration fees and radiation-related excess BC.ResultsThe LEs of stages I, II, III, and IV were 31.4, 27.2, 20.0, and 5.2 years, respectively, while the loss-of-LEs were 1.2, 4.9, 11.7, and 25.0 years with corresponding LMEs of US$ 73,791, 79,496, 89,962, and 66,981, respectively. The difference in LE between stages I and IV was 26.2 years while that of loss-of-LE was 23.8 years, which implies that a potential lead time bias may exist if diagnosis at younger ages for earlier stages were not adjusted for. The ICER of mammography seemed cost-saving after the coverage exceeded half a million.ConclusionMammography could detect BC early and be cost-saving after adjustment for different distributions of age and calendar year of diagnosis. Future studies exploring healthcare expenditure and impaired quality of life for false-positive cases are warranted.Copyright © 2021 Formosan Medical Association. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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