Onkológia 3/2011

Cancer drug consumption in Slovakia and its economic impact – development and trends

Modern cancer treatment brings not only advances in clinical outcomes, but also imposes new economic demands. In Slovakia, the total cost of pharmacotherapy of cancer reached 190 million Euro in 2010, which is more than the cost of pharmacotherapy for cardiovascular diseases. However, in terms of incidence of cancers it represents only one-tenth of the occurrence of cardiovascular disease. Need for a medicinal product depends on the number of patients with treated disease in the country. From this perspective, registries of patients with serious illnesses are important. In Slovakia there are several national registries managed by National Health Information Center (NHIC), including the National registry of patients with cancer, although since 2006 being in decline. The existence of registries is a good starting point for estimating the real consumption of medicines for the disease. It constitutes an incentive for pharmaceutical manufacturers and, together with data on consumption in the previous period, it is important for the ministry of health in the pricing and planning financial cost to treat patients. In this work we focus attention on the drug consumption for cancer and show its development as well as evaluation of availability of this type of therapy for patients in Slovakia for the period 2002 – 2010.

Keywords: cancer treatment, economics, utilization, consumption of cancer drugs.