Abstract
BACKGROUND: Cancer is the second cause of deaths worldwide and the accessibility to hospitals and clinics in low-income countries has been a challenging task, especially for public health care institutions due to the high costs of treatments available and there still are inequalities among geographical regions imposing barriers to broad treatment availability. METHODS: In this work, secondary data obtained from 2022 to 2025 were used. The number of head & neck cases and deaths in Brazil were estimated as well as the costs for assessed conventional treatment from the Brazilian public database and GLOBOCAN. The number of published papers, patents and clinical trials on gold nanoparticles were also collected from public websites. The searching time for publications used all data available from 2008 up to 2024. and patents were limited from 2018 until 2024.The search strategy included the Boolean operator < AND > and < OR>. For cost calculations the parameter used was BR$ to US$ = 5.92 exchange for the year 2025 and chemical supply prices were obtained from company websites. RESULTS: Based on data recorded, the number of new cases and deaths from 2022 to 2025 estimates an increase of 500 new cases and 220 deaths for lip and oral cavity, 50 and 5 for salivary glands, 320 and 210 for oropharynx, 48 and 26 for nasopharynx, 100 and 44 for hypopharynx and 540 new cases and 340 deaths for larynx cancer, respectively. The estimative of cancer occurrence for oral cavity and larynx in 3 years encompasses 45,300 and 23,370, respectively. The cost for immunotherapy purchase was estimated at US$ 6 million and gold nanoparticles-cetuximab price was estimated at US$ 2,706 for 3 years. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that gold nanoparticles can contribute to the achievement of equity in public health care by decreasing immunotherapy costs. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-026-14030-2.