Dr. Neal Shore on Increasing Healthcare Costs and Metastasis Risk in Prostate Cancer

Neal Shore, MD, medical director of the Carolina Urologic Research Institute, discusses a retrospective study investigating the relationship between treatment costs and the timing of diagnosis of metastases in prostate cancer.

Using SEER data over an 11-year period, Shore and his team looked at patients that presented with high-risk locally advanced prostate cancer.

The analysis looked at 10,000 patients and did a cost analysis from 12 months before they developed metastases to 12 months after. Interestingly patients’ costs went up 1-2 months before the diagnosis of metastases, said Shore, and it continued to stay up after they were diagnosed.

These findings show that many patients start to have symptomatology and increased costs prior to them even being diagnosed with a malignancy. This information may help identify patients that are high-risk based on their increasing healthcare costs, said Shore.