Posted by Michael Wonder on 04 Oct 2016
Costs and concerns in cancer care
5 October 2016 - Some recently developed anticancer drugs appear to be a major advance.
In metastatic malignant melanoma a number of new immune checkpoint inhibitors have created excitement and hope in a disease for which there was previously no effective treatment. One magazine hailed them as ‘the most revolutionary cancer treatment in decades’. These targeted drugs are likely to have a major impact on the treatment outcomes for other advanced incurable cancers too, but they are very expensive.
In practice, many of the earlier targeted cancer drugs have turned out to be disappointing. They are only suitable for a limited number of patients, and only add, on average, a few months of survival.
The clinical trials of new anticancer drugs use highly selected patients and the reported outcomes do not relate to the general community that we treat daily. For the benefits these drugs deliver, the costs seem excessive. How are we to determine which new drugs are cost-effective and how do we pay for the ones that are?
