24 June 2019 - A change in the expectations about future treatments may change the option value of a current treatment, thereby affecting its utilisation.

Li and colleagues conducted an interrupted time series analysis using a large administrative claims database to test whether the utilization of existing cancer treatments changed after the disclosures of the then‐investigational drug ipilimumab's Phase II and Phase III results among metastatic melanoma patients from 2008 to 2011. 

They used a multinomial logistic regression to analyse the temporal probability of receiving anti-neoplastic systemic therapy, surgical resection of metastasis, or both, relative to no treatment, in the first 3 months following the first metastasis diagnosis.

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