Robotic Lobectomy Is Cost-effective and Provides Comparable Health Utility Scores to Video-assisted Lobectomy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to determine if robotic-assisted lobectomy (RPL-4) is cost-effective and offers improved patient-reported health utility for patients with early-stage non-small cell lung cancer when compared with video-assisted thoracic surgery lobectomy (VATS-lobectomy). BACKGROUND: Barriers against the adoption of RPL-4 in publicly funded health care include the paucity of high-quality prospective trials and the perceived high cost of robotic surgery. METHODS: Patients were enrolled in a blinded, multicentered, randomized controlled trial in Canada, the United States, and France, and were randomized 1:1 to either RPL-4 or VATS-lobectomy. EuroQol 5 Dimension 5 Level (EQ-5D-5L) was administered at baseline and postoperative day 1; weeks 3, 7, 12; and months 6 and 12. Direct and indirect costs were tracked using standard methods. Seemingly Unrelated Regression was applied to estimate the cost effect, adjusting for baseline health utility. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio was generated by 10,000 bootstrap samples with multivariate imputation by chained equations. RESULTS: Of 406 patients screened, 186 were randomized, and 164 analyzed after the final eligibility review (RPL-4: n=81; VATS-lobectomy: n=83). Twelve-month follow-up was completed by 94.51% (155/164) of participants. The median age was 68 (60-74). There were no significant differences in body mass index, comorbidity, pulmonary function, smoking status, baseline health utility, or tumor characteristics between arms. The mean 12-week health utility score was 0.85 (0.10) for RPL-4 and 0.80 (0.19) for VATS-lobectomy ( P =0.02). Significantly more lymph nodes were sampled [10 (8-13) vs 8 (5-10); P =0.003] in the RPL-4 arm. The incremental cost/quality-adjusted life year of RPL-4 was $14,925.62 (95% CI: $6843.69, $23,007.56) at 12 months. CONCLUSION: Early results of the RAVAL trial suggest that RPL-4 is cost-effective and associated with comparable short-term patient-reported health utility scores when compared with VATS-lobectomy.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".