Economic evaluations in aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma

Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) has the highest incidence rate of all haematological malignancies in the Western world 1 • In the USA, the number of deaths attributable to NHL currently ranks in the top five of cancer related deaths2 In the Netherlands, haematological malignancies rank 8 in the cancer incidence list, and about 2100 inhabitants per year are newly diagnosed with NHL1 . Between 1973 and 1989, the incidence of NHL increased by nearly 60% in the United States, which is one of the largest increases observed in any cancer3 . This rise has not stopped yet: NHL is amongst the small number of malignancies that also have shown markedly increased incidence and mortality rates during the recent past'· 4 During the same years, health care costs in developed countries have risen faster than the general inflation rate, making economic evaluations an integral part of health care decision making5 These developments underline the need for economic evaluations of NHL, and this thesis will therefore focus on this kind of evaluations in the most prevalent subtype of NHL.

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