CN4 - Economic Burden of Lung Cancer Attributable to Smoking In China in 2015

Abstract

Evaluations on economic burden of cancer attributable to smoking in China were conducted ten years ago, but most recent data, particularly specific to lung cancer, is not available yet. A prevalence-based approach was used to estimate the total smoking attributable expenditure (SAE), which contained direct expenditure and indirect expenditure (premature deaths). Detailed data on one-year expenditure per patient (by age group, gender, urban/rural area and region) were re-analyzed based our recent multicenter survey across 13 provinces of China and all values discounted to year 2015. Information on smoking exposure and number of lung cancer cases and deaths were obtained from the Global Burden of Disease Study. The total SAE of lung cancer was estimated as US $9527.1 million in China in 2015 (accounting for 0.09% of the local gross domestic product), the decomposed direct and indirect SAE were estimated as $2505.0 million (accounting for 0.4% of total healthcare expenditure in local) and $7022.1 million (73.7% of total SAE), respectively. With 42.0% and 2.4% smoking prevalence among male and female in 2005, 93.5% of the total SAE occurred in male lung cancer in 2015 ($8903.3 million). Mainly due to the variation of burden of disease, age-specific total SAE peaked at 60-64 years group, urban areas’ total SAE higher than rural areas’. In 2025, the SAE of lung cancer, compared with that in 2015, would increase by 30.9% ($12471.0 million). This might be the most detailed estimation on economic burden of lung cancer attributable to smoking in China. SAE caused by lung cancer accounted at least one tenth of all-diseases-caused SAE, compared to previous study. Without main population-level smoking intervention introduced, the economic burden of lung cancer attributable to smoking will continually increase over the next ten years.