A Review of M ethods for E stimating Economic Burden of Cancer

Cancer is responsible for an important part of health care costs. Policymakers need to be aware of the costs of cancer to allocate resources properly in health systems. In this paper، we explain the methods of estimating economic burden of cancer. We searched published articles and reports related to estimating costs and economic burden of cancer in known databases including Ovid Medline، Scopus، PubMed، and Google scholar. Then we reviewed the methods of selected studies. The economic burden of cancer is measured by cost، the monetary valuation of resources used to treat cancer، or the loss of economic opportunities related to cancer occurrence and treatment. There are two main approaches for estimating the economic burden of cancer: prevalence-based approach and incidence-based approach. The prevalence-based approach is more applicable; and policymakers are mostly interested in using this approach. In economic burden studies، many perspectives are used for calculating costs; however، the social perspective is more common. In the most studies، costs are categorized in three group including direct costs، indirect costs and intangible costs. Approaches to measuring the direct costs include top-down approach، bottom-up approach and the econometric approach. Human capital approach and willingness to pay approach are used for measuring indirect costs; the human capital approach is more popular. Despite the importance of calculating the economic burden of diseases for resource allocation، few studies have been conducted on this issue in Iran. Researchers can use the methods presented in this paper to calculate the economic burden of cancer and other diseases in Iran.