Elyesa Ünal, Elena Goodchild, Volker Winkler, et al. Arch Public Health. 2025 Oct 13;83(1):243
Lung Cancer is one of the four most frequent malignant neoplasms in the world, and first in mortality. In 2020, lung cancer resulted in roughly 1.8 million deaths globally. Lung cancer is a major public health problem in low and lower-middle income countries, where high rates of tobacco smoking, environmental pollution, and limited access to healthcare resources contribute to a significant burden of the disease. A systematic database search was performed according to PRISMA guidelines on Web of Science, PubMed, Cochrane, EBSCO, ISPOR, and Google Scholar using a pre-defined search string. Of 2,383 articles, 15 met the inclusion criteria. All studies were conducted in low- and lower-middle-income countries, with a time frame ranging from 2003 to 2025. Total average direct costs ranged from USD 2,540.66 per patient in Nepal to USD 10,179.98 per patient in the first year of treatment in Bolivia. Indirect costs varied from USD 140,995,744.13 in Bangladesh to USD 320,427,043.97 in Vietnam for their given respective sample sizes. In conclusion, the costs of lung cancer are substantial and increase with disease progression, encompassing both direct and indirect components. High out-of-pocket expenditures further intensify the economic burden on patients and may lead to an underestimation of the true societal costs.
15 Apr, 2026