Background: Tislelizumab plus chemotherapy improved overall survival compared to chemotherapy alone, while maintaining an acceptable level of safety. But it’s still unclear which strategy is the most cost-effective. The objective of the study was to compare the cost-effectiveness of tislelizumab plus chemotherapy as first-line therapy for patients with advanced or metastatic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) versus chemotherapy alone.
Methods: A partitioned survival model with three states was constructed based on the RATIONALE-306 trial. The model’s time horizon was ten years, and its cycle was three weeks. Only direct medical costs were considered from the healthcare perspective in China. Calculations were performed on total costs, quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs). One-way sensitivity and probabilistic sensitivity analysis (PSA) were performed to determine the uncertainty regarding model parameters.
Results: Tislelizumab plus chemotherapy provided 1.35 QALYs for $26,450.77, while chemotherapy alone provided 0.89 QALY for $16,687.15. Compared to chemotherapy alone, tislelizumab had an ICER of $21,062.09/QALY. At the threshold of three times the Chinese GDP per capita ($38,253/QALY), the PSA indicated that tislelizumab had a 96.4% likelihood of being designated cost-effective. At the threshold of 1.5 times the Chinese GDP per capita ($19,126.5/QALY), the PSA indicated that tislelizumab had a probability of 48.7% of being designated cost-effective.
Conclusion: Tislelizumab plus chemotherapy as the first treatment for patients with advanced or metastatic ESCC may be a cost-effective option compared to chemotherapy alone at 3 times Chinese GDP per capita.
Keywords: esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, cost-effectiveness, partitioned survival model, tislelizumab