Health-state utilities in long-term advanced melanoma survivors comparable with the general population

Background: Checkpoint inhibitors have been shown to substantially improve the survival of patients with advanced melanoma. With this growing group of survivors treated with immunotherapies, assessing their health-state utilities is essential and can be used for the calculation of quality-adjusted life years and for cost-effectiveness analyses. Therefore, we evaluated the health-state utilities in long-term advanced melanoma survivors. Methods: Health-state utilities were evaluated in a cohort of advanced melanoma survivors 24–36 months (N = 37) and 36-plus months (N = 47) post-ipilimumab monotherapy. In addition, the health-state utilities of the 24–36 months survivor group were assessed longitudinally, and utilities of the combined survival groups (N = 84) were compared with a matched control population (N = 168). The EQ-5D was used to generate health-state utility values, and quality-of-life questionnaires were used to establish correlations and influencing factors of utility scores. Results: Health-state utility scores were similar between the 24–36 months’- and the 36-plus months’ survival group (0.81 vs 0.86; p =.22). In survivors, lower utility scores were associated with symptoms of depression (β = − .82, p =.022) and fatigue burden (β = − .29, p =.007). Utility scores did not significantly change after 24–36 months of survival, and the utilities of survivors were comparable to the matched control population (0.84 vs 0.87; p =.07). Discussion: Our results show that long-term advanced melanoma survivors treated with ipilimumab monotherapy experience relatively stable and high health-state utility scores.