Understanding Cost-Effectiveness Analyses: An Explanation Using Three Different Analyses of Lung Cancer Screening.

Abstract

Cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs) contribute to informed decision making, at both the practitioner and societal levels; therefore, understanding CEAs is valuable for radiologists. In light of the recently published National Lung Cancer Screening Trial (NLST) CEA, we aim to explain the terminology, methods, and heterogeneity of CEAs. We compared the NLST results to two example lung cancer screening CEAs (which do not rely on NLST data). Both examples assessed screening but reached substantially different conclusions.