Rituximab maintenance therapy (RM) for relapsed/refractory follicular lymphoma (FL): Long-term economic impact in the French setting

8076 Background: FL in advanced stages is a life-threatening chronic disease. As recently demonstrated in the pivotal trial EORTC20981, RM significantly prolongs both progression free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in relapsed/refractory FL patients responding to an induction treatment. Beyond these clinical benefits, the study objective was to assess, from the French Sickness Funds perspective, long-term costs and cost-effectiveness of RM after induction therapy versus current standard practice (observation). Methods: A lifetime transition model (30-years time horizon) with 3 health states (progression free, progressive disease and death) was developed comparing RM and observation (Obs). PFS and OS in the health states transition model were derived from the EORTC20981 trial with a median follow-up of 28 months. PFS and the OS benefits of RM therapy were conservatively assumed to last only 5 years. Standard French costs (2006 national tariffs) were applied to resources estimated from a prescript...