Cancer is a very costly disease that is continuing to increase in prevalence - approximately 1.4 million new cases of cancer were diagnosed in the US in 1996. However, accurate data on the total costs of cancer care are lacking because of the limitations of existing healthcare databases. Professor Jim Koeller, from the University of Texas, US, presented some ‘ground-breaking’ research on the ‘real-world’ total direct costs of treating non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists' (ASHP) Annual Meeting [Minneapolis, US; June 1997]. Professor Koeller and colleagues have also assessed the total direct costs of treating ovarian and small-cell lung cancers. Results of their prospective study showed that total cost data cannot be extrapolated from one type of cancer to another.