Budget Impact Analysis of Molecular Lymph Node Staging Versus Conventional Histopathology Staging in Colorectal Carcinoma

Background The presence of lymph node (LN) metastasis is a critical prognostic factor in colorectal cancer (CRC) patients and is also an indicator for adjuvant chemotherapy. The gold standard (GS) technique for LN diagnosis and staging is based on the analysis of haematoxylin and eosin (H&E)-stained slides, but its sensitivity is low. As a result, patients may not be properly diagnosed and some may have local recurrence or distant metastases after curative-intent surgery. Many of these diagnostic and treatment problems could be avoided if the one-step nucleic acid amplification assay (OSNA) was used rather than the GS technique. OSNA is a fast, automated, standardised, highly sensitive, quantitative technique for detecting LN metastases. Objectives The aim of this study was to assess the budget impact of introducing OSNA LN analysis in early-stage CRC patients in the Spanish National Health System (NHS). Methods A budget impact analysis comparing two scenarios (GS vs. OSNA) was developed within the Spanish NHS framework over a 3-year time frame (2017–2019). The patient population consisted of newly diagnosed CRC patients undergoing surgical treatment, and the following costs were included: initial surgery, pathological diagnosis, staging, follow-up expenses, systemic treatment and surgery after recurrence. One- and two-way sensitivity analyses were performed. Results Using OSNA instead of the GS would have saved €1,509,182, €6,854,501 and €10,814,082 during the first, second and third years of the analysis, respectively, because patients incur additional costs in later years, leading to savings of more than €19 million for the NHS over the 3-year time horizon. Conclusions Introducing OSNA in CRC LN analysis may represent not only an economic benefit for the NHS but also a clinical benefit for CRC patients since a more accurate staging could be performed, thus avoiding unnecessary treatments.