Cost Analysis of sq-NSCLC Treatments

The costs of implementing each treatment were derived the perspective of Chinese healthcare system. All cost data were inflated to 2022, shown as 2022 US dollars (1 USD = 6.36 Chinese Yuan). We considered only direct medical costs, including drug costs, follow-up costs, monitoring costs, death costs, and costs for treatment of adverse reactions (AEs). Drug prices were obtained from the latest local public bid-winning price or public databases (41 –43 ). The prices of camrelizumab used in first-line or tislelizumab used in second-line were assumed to be the same as other indications of them which have entered the NRDL, considering the newly approved indication of sq-NSCLC would likely to be included in the list and the price is the same for all indications of the same drug in the NRDL. Prices for paclitaxel and gemcitabine were from the fifth batch of bids for centralized drug procurement of drugs in China in 2021 (41 –43 ). Because carboplatin, cisplatin, paclitaxel, docetaxel, and nedaplatin have multiple dosage forms in the Chinese market, we chose the commonly used dosage combination under the principle of minimizing cost. Follow-up costs and monitoring costs were derived from the healthcare documents (44 ), which included CT examination, blood test, urinalysis, and blood biochemical examination, as wells as diagnosis fee, injection fee, nursing fee, and bed fee. Costs of BSC and end-of-life were extracted from published literature. We considered only severe AEs (≥grade 3) with rates >5%. AE related treatment costs and durations of AE were extracted from published articles. All AEs were assumed to occur during the first cycle (45 (link)). Details are listed in Table 1.