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Background: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a subset of breast cancer. Health care cost and utilization data for TNBC are lacking.

Objective: We examined differences between metastatic TNBC and metastatic non-TNBC in survival and health care costs and utilization.

Methods: This retrospective analysis of metastatic TNBC (134 patients) and metastatic non-TNBC (445 patients) used a proprietary oncology registry, the Impact Intelligence Oncology Management registry database, linked with health insurance claims and social security mortality data.

Results: We found metastatic patients whose breast cancer is triple negative to be younger (56.49 vs 59.24 years), to be more likely to have recurrent disease (64.93 vs 45.39%), and to have greater mortality vs metastatic non-TNBC patients (67.16 vs 50.79%) (all P less than .05). Recurrent patients with metastatic TNBC have the highest risk of death (HR, 1.9; P less than   .001), whereas survival was greatest for de novo metastatic non-TNBC. Patients with metastatic TNBC had more all-cause annual hospitalizations, more hospitalized days, and higher total costs vs metastatic non-TNBC. Annual payer’s total costs, annual payer’s inpatient costs, cancer-related hospitalizations, and cancer-related inpatient costs also were greater among patients with metastatic TNBC.

Limitations: While the study spans slightly more than 2 years, 5-10 years would have been preferable to achieve a full clinical profile of indexed patients. The database also omitted factors that potentially confound the results, such as race and socioeconomic status.

Conclusions: Metastatic TNBC is associated with significant burden of disease and higher health care utilization vs metastatic non-TNBC, which may be due in part to the aggressive clinical course of the disease...

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