Socialized medicine - and this is what you get:
The Daily Telegraph
By Kate Devlin Medical Correspondent
Cancer drugs ruled as too costly for NHS
CANCER patients are to be denied drugs that could keep them alive after the NHS rationing watchdog ruled that they are too expensive.
Patient groups said the decision, announced today by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), would condemn many sufferers of kidney cancer to an “early death”.
The four prohibited medicines include Sutent, which can prolong life in kidney cancer patients by up to two years. The draft guidance also rejects Avastin, Nexavar and Torisel.
Nice said the drugs were too expensive, at about £24,000 a year per patient, for the benefits they offered and would mean the health service was less able to afford more costeffective drugs for other illnesses. However, the decision reignites the debate around how the NHS prioritises which drugs are approved for use.
It comes just a week after Andrew Dillon, the chief executive of Nice, said smokers and the obese should not be denied NHS medication because of their lifestyle.
Following Nice’s latest decision, one surgeon said there would be no point in accepting kidney cancer patients if he was not able to prescribe Sutent because so few respond to other treatments.
Prof John Wagstaff, from the South West Wales Cancer Institute, in Swansea, said: “The possibility that we clinicians may be prevented from offering Sutent to our patients is an outrage. This decision will mean that the UK will have the poorest survival figures [for the cancer] in Europe.”
Prof Peter Littlejohns, Nice’s clinical and public health director, said: “Although these treatments are clinically effective, regrettably the cost to the NHS is such that they are not a cost-effective use of NHS resources.” He added that the organisation had to make some of the “hardest” decisions in public life.
Around 7,000 patients are diagnosed with kidney cancer in Britain every year. The disease progresses to the advanced stage in around 1,700 cases annually.
Approximately 3,600 patients in Britain would be eligible for Sutent, which acts against the growth of advanced kidney cancer and is available more widely in France and Germany.
Campaigners said patients would be left with just one other option, Interferon, but many sufferers do not respond to the drug. Otherwise they would have to pay for the drugs privately.
Nice previously faced controversy over its advice that Herceptin, the breast cancer drug, could only be used for advanced cases. Following a sustained campaign and legal battles, the drug was allowed for early stages of the disease.
In May, the Court of Appeal ruled that Nice had been procedurally unfair in refusing to give anti-dementia medicines such as Aricept, costing about £2.50 a day, to thousands of Alzheimer’s patients. They have so far been denied the medicines, and are awaiting Nice’s economic reasoning.
James Whale, the broadcaster who was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2000, said Sutent had given many families “hope for the future” and urged Nice to think again.
He said: “If final guidance remains as it currently stands it will certainly mean an early death sentence for many.”
Some local health care trusts have been offering the drug to small numbers of patients.
William James Lloyd, 62, was given Sutent after being diagnosed with cancer three years ago, and says it allowed him to see the birth of his two youngest grandchildren.
The retired headmaster from Llanddewi Brefi in Ceredigion, west Wales, said: “This drug has let me live to see things I could not have seen otherwise.”
Nice does not intend to offer a final decision until January. Patients already on the medication should continue to receive the drugs until they and their doctor think it is appropriate to stop treatment, according to the guidance.
Pat Hanlon, from Kidney Cancer UK, said that the decision would have a “devastating impact on patients” .
medical
british French canadian
socialized medicine
Subscribe To
Posts
Comments