Introduction Over the last few years, there has been an improvement in the survival trend for all cancers due to progress in oncology and the availability of new more powerful and selective therapies but economically much more expensive.
New very effective but expensive drugs are also available for melanoma (particularly immunotherapeutic drugs and molecular targeted drugs) to whom patients’ costs for the 2013-2016 years were detected.
Materials and Methods Patients with residency in the province of Bergamo were selected. The data of the “File F Expenditure” flows validated by Lombardia Region for the years 2013-2014-2015-2016 were analyzed. Regarding the analysis of patients’ cohort, it has also been crossed the flows of patient’s database, the hospitalization database and the information contained in the clinical records.
Results A total of 92 patients (32 females e 60 males) were treated. The economic charge for high cost melanoma drugs increased dramatically from 2013 to 2016, quadrupling in four years and coming in 2016 to more than 2 million Euros. If in 2013 immunotherapeutic drugs represented 93% of annual expenditure for melanoma high cost therapies, in 2016 molecular targeted therapies exceeded 50%.
Conclusion New melanoma drugs have provided more survival for patients but with high costs. Good prevention could reduce the incidence of new drug treatments leading to a recovery of resource.

​

​

Key words: melanoma, File F, high cost, immunotherapeutic drugs, molecular targeted drugs, expenditure, resources