8:21am Monday 23rd February 2009
Exclusive By Barry Nelson
A DECISION to allow North-East cancer specialists to prescribe a new drug has so far helped 49 patients, it was revealed last night.
The decision, in July 2007, meant North-East patients with advanced kidney cancer were among the first in England to receive the drug on the NHS.
While Sutent is widely used in Europe and the US, it is only in the past few weeks that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has said it believes the drug should be available on the NHS.
The difficulties faced by North-East patients in getting access to Sutent – despite evidence that the drug could extend life and reduce symptoms – was highlighted by The Northern Echo’s End NHS Injustice campaign to improve access to cancer drugs to NHS patients.
The Newcastle-based North of England Cancer Drug Approvals Group recently carried out a clinical audit for the first year Sutent was approved in the region.
Figures show that between July 2007 and July last year, 33 men and 16 women were prescribed sutent.
Steve Williamson, consultant pharmacist with the group, said: “We actually prescribed the drug to more patients than we expected, because there was a bit of a backlog.
“We feel it was money well spent, because it was helping people with a form of cancer for which there is pretty much no real effective therapy.”
The treatments cost a total of £784,000, which worked out at about £16,000 per patient.
Rose Woodward, a former patient who leads the Kidney Cancer Support Network, praised the North-East NHS for eventually agreeing to approve Sutent 18 months ahead of Nice, but said it had been a struggle.
“They put up quite a fight at first. I think we dragged them into it, but once the North- East approved Sutent, it put pressure on every other primary care trust to fund the drug,” said Mrs Woodward, who has helped more than 100 cancer patients to win appeals against their PCT (primary care trust) to get funding for Sutent.
“In every subsequent patient appeal we were involved in, we used the documents produced by the North-East cancer group.
“It was very difficult for other PCTs to then say the drug was not effective.”
Ray Devonport, from Chilton, County Durham, whose wife, Kathleen, won a battle with her PCT for funding for Sutent, said: “The Northern Echo was brilliant in helping patients like my wife get the drug she needed.”
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