Li G, Qiu, B Huang YX, et al. - Via this study, researchers investigated the cost-effectiveness of intensity-modulated proton radiation therapy (IMPT, the advanced form of proton beam therapy) vs intensity-modulated photon-radiation therapy (IMRT) for treatment decision making of paranasal sinus and nasal cavity cancers in Chinese settings. For performing cost-effectiveness analysis, they designed a 3-state Markov model. In base case evaluation, a patient of 47-year-old was included (median age of patients with paranasal sinus and nasal cavity cancers in China). Probabilistic sensitivity analysis, Markov cohort analysis and Tornado diagram were used to examine model robustness. One-way sensitivity analyses were performed to further identify cost-effective scenarios of IMPT and stratified analyses were done for different age levels. If a strategy has ICER below the societal willingness-to-pay (WTP) threshold of China (30,828 US dollars ($) / quality-adjusted life year (QALY)), they defined the strategy as cost-effective. For the base case, they identified IMPT as being cost-effective at the WTP of China, providing an extra 1.65 QALYs at an additional cost of $38,928.7 compared with IMRT, and had an ICER of $23,611.2 / QALY. Only in the following independent conditions, cost-effective scenarios of IMPT existed: probability of IMPT eradicating cancer ≥ 0.867; probability of IMRT eradicating cancer ≤ 0.764; or cost of IMPT ≤ $52,163.9. Relative to older patients, younger patients had IMPT as more cost-effective, and it was cost-effective only in patients ≤56-year-old.