Economic evaluation of toripalimab plus chemotherapy compared with chemotherapy as first-line treatment for advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in China

The purpose of this study was to compare the cost-effectiveness of toripalimab versus Chemotherapy for patients with advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) from the perspective of the Chinese healthcare system. A partitioned survival model was designed. Clinical data on survival was taken from the JUPITER-06 trials. Direct medical expenditures and utilities were gathered from published literature and a local database. One-way and probability sensitivity methods were used to evaluate the model’s robustness. Compared with chemotherapy alone, toripalimab offered an incremental cost of $8950.427 with an additional 0.294 QALYs, yielding an ICER of 30,443.629$/QALYs first-line therapy for advanced ESCC. The ICER was below the threshold of willingness to pay in China, indicating that the toripalimab group had a cost-effective advantage. Sensitivity analysis showed that the ICERs were most sensitive to the utility of PD, but all the parameters had no significant impact on the model’s outcomes. Toripalimab may be a cost-effective first-line treatment choice in our research when compared to chemotherapy alone for patients with advanced ESCC.