Abstract

Aditi Chaturvedi40099* and Harish Chaturvedi40100

Considering that India’s middle class is not far above the International Poverty line and illness makes our population vulnerable to fall back into poverty. There is a pressing need to identify cost effective palliative chemotherapy medicines for the common man in India and apply the principles of pharmacoeconomics as an important priority in deciding the palliative chemotherapy medicines for the cancer patients. Pharmacoeconomics identifies and compares the costs and consequences of drug therapy to healthcare systems and society. This review article aims at compiling the current data available on the pharmacoeconomically cost effective palliative chemotherapy available for head and neck cancers and is meant to highlight important palliative chemotherapy medicines in head and neck cancers, comparing its cost and improvement in Quality of Life (QOL), TWIST (Time Without Symptoms or Toxicities) score/symptom control, Response Rate, survival advantage to overall guide the decisions of patient and their families in a ethically justified manner.