OBJECTIVES: Best supportive care (BSC) is in general individually provided to patients. Thus, the scope of BSC and its costs can vary widely. Only limited information on BSC costs for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) exists. Aim of this research was to estimate annual BSC costs for NSCLC patients in Germany. METHODS: To estimate BSC costs at first a literature search in PubMed with the key words “best supportive care”, “cost”, “non-small cell lung cancer” and “economic analysis” individual and combined search terms was performed. International publications of economic evaluations including data on single cost items which could be applied to the German healthcare system were included. Additionally, data on BSC from a NSCLC patient registry (n=193) and prescription data derived from a randomised controlled trial (RCT) were used as further references. Cost- items were extracted from each reference and finally applied to the German inpatient and outpatient reimbursement system.  RESULTS: The literature research yielded 317 records of which 3 met the inclusion criteria (2=UK; 1=North America). An extrapolation of these evaluation results to the German healthcare system showed that BSC costs based on UK data ranged from 16,940€ to 45,426€ (North America: 31,352€). According to health economic data from an RCT annual cost for BSC amounted to 17,531€, while data from a NSCLC patient registry added up to 28,070€. The average annual costs for BSC were estimated at 27,864€. CONCLUSIONS: Since BSC is individually delivered to patients, it leads to a high variance of annual BSC costs for NSCLC patients in Germany. Furthermore, international economic evaluations were extrapolated to the German healthcare system. Hence, results should be interpreted with caution as international treatment guidelines and reimbursement schemes are not fully applicable to Germany. Future analyses should be based on a German population only.