Höchstmöglicher ESMO-Wert vs. kein Zusatzznutzen

In the cover interview with 'Monitor Versorgungsforschung' (02/25), Dr Thomas Kaiser, Director of IQWiG, briefly discussed the benefit assessment of the active substance pembrolizumab and the MSD drug 'Keytruda' (1): In response to the question 'How is it that IQWiG sees a lower benefit in an assessment, while the ESMO, a European specialist society, sees the highest possible assessment?' (2), Kaiser replied as follows: 'In the ESMO assessment, only the observed benefit in terms of recurrence plays a role.' In its benefit assessment (3), IQWiG also described the advantage of the active substance for recurrences, but weighted it differently from the ESMO (4). In this interview, MVF promised to investigate this considerable contradiction in the interpretation of evidence.