Cancer survival extension from drug treatments

Cancer causes one in four of all deaths in the UK. Advances in biologic and pharmaceutical therapies over recent years have increased achievable survival gain in most life-limiting cancers, ranging from modest incremental improvements to step changes in life expectancy. The realised and anticipated impact of treatment advances on survival is of wide-ranging interest, from informing decisions about healthcare to understanding influences on mortality trends. This paper presents an overview of evidence for survival extension from a range of therapies that have become available in recent years for the treatment of lung, colorectal and breast cancer. The evidence considered includes short-term empirical evidence from clinical trials as well as longer-term estimates from models extrapolating over a lifetime horizon. The core data source is the evidence base supporting guidance published by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), UK. This evidence has already been subject to appraisal by NICE; the aim of this paper is to collate the existing estimates submitted to NICE in order to appreciate the wide range in survival extension resulting from systematically identified cancer treatments.