Medical Cost of Colorectal Cancer Services in Serbia Between 2014 and 2017: National Data Report

Colorectal cancer has been a health burden for decades. Although it is considered to be a disease of the developed world, the incidence rate of CRC has been on the rise in developing countries as well (Favoriti et al., 2016; Douaiher et al., 2017). According to the World Health Organization GLOBOCAN database (Bray et al., 2018), is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer and the fourth main cause of cancer death in the world, accounting for 881,000 deaths in 2018. Colorectal cancer also causes substantial morbidity and mortality in Serbia. According to the same database, the number of new cases of in 2018 was 6,049 (12.6% of any form of cancer), while the number of the deaths caused by was 3,187 (2.9% of all cancer-related deaths) (The Global Cancer Observatory, 2018).
The number of cases of CRC in Serbia was found to be on the 4% rise between the years 2014 and 2017, whereas the total cost of medical services rendered to these patients overwhelmingly outpaced this trend (27% increase). Such an upsurge in the total cost was estimated to result in about one-third increase in the public health expenditures going toward the CRC medical services over the 4-year study period. Furthermore, individual components of medical services showed variable but not particularly excessive trends, the most notable being a 5% point increase in the cost of all medication used in patients with CRC. In terms of chemotherapy alone, the absolute cost increased by 47.8% and within it, the relative cost of mAbs went 10-percentage points up vis-à-vis the relative cost of conventional cytotoxic drugs.