Cancer Screening Costs $88.7B Annually; New Tool Reduces Invasiveness and Price
PARK CITY, UT (PRWEB) January 16, 2017 -- One thing common to all types of cancer is that it’s a tremendously expensive disease not only to treat, but to test for, as well. The money spent screening for and treating cancer in the United States is estimated to be $88.7 billion every year.(1) Doctors in the U.S. screen patients for cancer more than in any other country that has an advanced healthcare system, sometimes spending as much on screening as is spent on actual treatment.(2) With cancer rates expected to surge 57% worldwide over the next two decades,(3) the economic impact cannot be overlooked.
A substantial portion of rising costs comes from the overuse of imprecise, unnecessary cancer screening tests, particularly for prostate and breast cancer. Paul Crowe, chairman and CEO of NuView Life Sciences, says, “Traditional screening tools can’t get down to a patient-specific level of diagnosis and are often limited in diagnostic ability.” Crowe explains that there has been a huge push to screen people for cancer—regardless of their medical history—but that this may not be the best practice. What’s being seen now is misuse and waste of resources, both of which are driving up healthcare costs for those involved.
By 2017, screening for prostate cancer is expected to cost $17.4 billion annually.(4) However, conventional screening methods, such as prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests, are often unreliable. False-positive PSA tests lead to expensive, needless biopsies, surgeries and other forms of treatment, all of which can have profoundly negative, lasting impacts on the patient. On the other hand, false-negative tests can lull patients into a false sense of security, putting off treatment until years later, when the disease is far more invasive and expensive to treat, and lessening the patient’s chances of survival.
For prostate cancer, NuView is developing a new precision screening tool based on its NV VPAC1 technology. The cancer-specific urine screening tool can be used to screen for both prostate and bladder cancer by accurately detecting cancer cells in voided urine specimens.(5) This type of screening is more conclusive and less expensive than traditional screening tools like the PSA test, allowing physicians to quickly and correctly diagnose cancer in laboratory-type settings.(5)
NuView is also developing new screening tools for breast cancer, which is notoriously difficult to diagnose at its earliest stages. Mammography is currently the only screening method available, but it cannot reliably detect precancerous lesions.(6) Over 80% of women who receive abnormal mammogram results are subjected to invasive, painful biopsies and other treatments, only to have further tests prove the masses to be benign.(5)
There are 1.6 million breast biopsies performed in the U.S. annually, and approximately 1.3 million of these result in a benign diagnosis.(5) A more highly precise screening tool can drastically reduce the number of unnecessary, invasive breast biopsies performed each year by pinpointing specific breast cancer mutations within a patient. This will also save the country’s healthcare system billions of dollars every year.
Crowe stated, “It’s time to replace current diagnostic tools with precision-based, cancer-specific screening methods. The benefits are two-fold: patients are saved from unnecessary tests and treatment, which increases their quality of life and preserves their health status; and secondly, our healthcare system is saved millions—perhaps billions—of dollars every year that are wasted on pointless tests and therapeutic interventions.”
NVLS is committed to lowering healthcare costs across the board while still providing healthcare providers and patients with a new and more accurate method of obtaining conclusive cancer results.
About NuView Life Sciences:
Founded in 2005, NuView Life Sciences is a biotechnology company located in Park City, Utah, working to reform the way cancer is diagnosed and treated in our modern healthcare system. NuView is focused on creating precision cancer diagnostics and therapeutics to improve patient outcomes while reducing healthcare costs through the development and clinical application of its exclusive peptide analog technology, NV-VPAC1.
Led by a team of industry experts with decades of combined experience in healthcare and medical imaging technologies, NuView is poised to change how we look for and respond to cancer. To learn more about NuView Life Sciences, please visit http://nuviewinfo.com/site/3/.
Sources:
1. Economic Impact of Cancer. American Cancer Society. http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancerbasics/economic-impact-of-cancer
2. Stop overscreening for cancer. American Enterprise Institute. https://www.aei.org/publication/stop-overscreening-for-cancer/
3. WHO: Imminent global cancer ‘disaster’ reflects aging, lifestyle factors. CNN. http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/04/health/who-world-cancer-report/
4. Global Prostate Cancer Market to Reach $50.3 Billion in 2017. Bcc Research. http://www.bccresearch.com/pressroom/phm/global-prostate-cancer-market-reach-$50.3-billion-2017
5. Molecular Imaging Lights the Way for the Future of Medicine. NuView Life Sciences. http://nuviewinfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/NuView-eBook-1.10.2013-.pdf
6. Recent Controversies in Mammography Screening for Breast Cancer. Medscape. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/430076
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