Comparing the cost-effectiveness of sintilimab + pemetrexed plus platinum and pemetrexed plus platinum alone as a first-line therapy for Chinese patients with nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer

BACKGROUND: Pemetrexed plus platinum alone is the conventional first-line therapy for locally advanced metastatic nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) without targetable genetic aberrations. The ORIENT-11 trial revealed that sintilimab + pemetrexed plus platinum could yield more survival benefits for patients with nonsquamous NSCLC. The present study aimed to assess the cost-effectiveness of sintilimab + pemetrexed plus platinum vs. that of pemetrexed plus platinum alone as the first-line therapy for patients with nonsquamous NSCLC to inform clinically rational drug use and provide a basis for medical decision-making. METHODS: A partitioned survival model was created to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of two groups from the perspective of the healthcare system in China. The clinical data for adverse event probabilities and extrapolating long-term survival originally collected in a phase III clinical trial (ORIENT-11) were retrieved. Local public databases and literature were used to acquire data on utility and cost. The heemod package in R software was used to calculate the life years (LYs), quality-adjusted LYs (QALYs), and total costs in each group to generate the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) in the base case and to conduct deterministic sensitivity analysis (DSA) and probabilistic sensitivity analysis (PSA). RESULTS: Our base case analysis (BCA) revealed that sintilimab combined with pemetrexed plus platinum provided an increase of 0.86 in QALYs with an increasing cost of United State dollar (USD) $4,317.84 relative to pemetrexed plus platinum in Chinese patients with nonsquamous NSCLC who were negative for targetable genetic variations, which induced an ICER of USD $5,020.74/QALY. The ICER value was lower than the set threshold value. The results exhibited strong robustness in the sensitivity analysis. In DSA, the parameter for the overall survival (OS) curve in chemotherapy and the cost of best supportive care were the main factors that impacted the result of the ICER. The PSA indicated that sintilimab and chemotherapy combination therapy was cost-effective. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that the combination of sintilimab + pemetrexed plus platinum is cost-effective as a first-line therapy in Chinese patients with nonsquamous NSCLC who are negative for targetable genetic variations from the perspective of the healthcare system.