Ranking the Hormone Therapy Medicines for Breast Cancer Using the Fuzzy AHP

Abstract

The objective of this study was to use Chang’s Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) to rank hormone therapy drugs for women with breast cancer who are post-menopausal. The study involved presenting hierarchical charts to a panel of experts, which included three oncologists who have more than ten years of experience in hormone therapy for breast cancer. The experts were given a pairwise comparison matrix to compare the importance of each criterion with each other and to express their answers based on fuzzy numbers. The expert panel used this approach to determine the extent of the criteria and sub-criteria. The results indicated that Anastrozole was the most preferred drug for hormone therapy in breast cancer patients who are post-menopausal, with a total score of 47.2, compared to Letrozole (35.7) and Exemestane (17.1). Anastrozole was 1.3 and 2.8 times more preferred than Letrozole and Exemestane. The study showed that Anastrozole was the most preferred drug due to its low cost, high survival rate, effectiveness, and, most importantly, sub-criteria including OS, ORR, TTP, TTF, and DFS.