Patients' preferences and willingness-to-pay for postmenopausal hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer treatments after failure of standard treatments

Patients' preferences increasingly play roles in cancer treatments. The objective of this study is to examine breast cancer patients' preferences and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for postmenopausal hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer treatments after failure of standard treatments. Four attributes, i.e. progression free survival (PFS), anemia, pneumonitis, and cost, and their levels of exemestane and exemestane plus everolimus from literature and patient interviews were used to develop a discrete choice experiment questionnaire. Each questionnaire was composed of seven choice sets and each choice set contained those four attributes with different levels. Breast cancer patients were asked to choose one treatment alternative in each choice set. Multinomial logit model was used to determine relative preferences of each attribute and the WTP for all attributes and treatments were calculated. A total of 146 patients were included in study analyses. Results showed that the patients preferred treatments with higher PFS and lower side effects. The patients were willing to pay US$151.6, US$69.8, and US$278.3 per month in exchange for every 1 month increase in PFS and every 1 % decreased risk of anemia and pneumonitis, respectively. The patients were willing to pay for exemestane and exemestane plus everolimus US$551.8 and US$414.2 per month, respectively. In conclusion, patients weighted importance on PFS, anemia, and pneumonitis, when they needed to choose an aromatase inhibitor plus mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitor for advanced breast cancer treatments after failure of standard treatments. They valued exemestane alone more than exemestane plus everolimus.