Cost of chemotherapy after lung cancer surgery

The standard chemotherapy regimen recommended by the guidelines is an NP regimen, vincristine combined with cisplatin or carboplatin, which costs about $1,000, which is very low, plus the cost of treatment, which is the cost of infusion or observation, including hospitalization, which is $3,000. However, the NP protocol has not been updated for many years, so we actually use it less in the clinic. For patients with adenocarcinoma, we will use the plan that has advantages for adenocarcinoma; for patients with squamous carcinoma, we will choose the plan that has advantages for squamous carcinoma. Although the guidelines do not recommend that, they do recommend that postoperative radiotherapy is the first choice, and NP is the standard regimen, and you can also choose a combination regimen that contains both platinum drugs. Of course, this is a little bit arbitrary, because after all, there are no clinical trial results, but this is the consensus. So if you switch to the pemetrexed regimen, the cost of chemotherapy for a course of treatment for adenocarcinoma patients is about $10,000; for squamous carcinoma patients with gemcitabine, the cost of a course of treatment is about $7,000, and the standard regimen for four courses of treatment is $40,000 for adenocarcinoma and about $30,000 for squamous carcinoma.