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Beatson Rejects Call to Drop Cancer Drug Patients Will Still Get Treatment Costing GBP10,000

Posted on: Tuesday, 8 November 2005, 15:00 CST

By EXCLUSIVE By JOHN McCANN Health Reporter

CANCER patients in Glasgow will still get a new drug rejected for general use by Scotland's drugs regulator because it's too expensive.

The Scottish Medicines Consortium has advised health boards not to prescribe Taxotere for advanced prostate cancer which doesn't respond to hormone treatment, saying it costs too much.

The Prostate Cancer Charity warned patients could be forced to pay up to GBP10,000 for their own treatment.

But the head of Glasgow's Beatson Oncology Centre promised men who would benefit would still get the drug.

The charity's chief executive, John Neate, called for the SMC to rethink, saying: "The decision is very bad news for men in Scotland.

"It may also invite legal challenges to NHS decisions on drugs if patients feel that drugs they need and have been clinically recommended are refused.

"The drug is regarded by many doctors as the treatment of choice.

"While cost must be taken into account, Taxotere is the only drug proven to improve survival and quality of life to men with prostate cancer atthis stage of their illness."

The SMC guidance says: "Docetaxel (the generic name of the drug) offers improvements in survival, pain control, and quality of life compared with the standard chemotherapy treatment.

"However, the costeffectiveness has not been demonstrated."

The news is a further blow to prostate cancer sufferers after the SMC last year rejected another drug, Zometa, which can help prevent bone tumours.

Today Professor Alan Rodger, the Beatson clinic's medical director, said he respected the SMC's research.

But he added: "I am worried about the possibility of men with prostate cancer thinking 'there is nothing there for us'.

"The clinicians here have drawn up a protocol for using Taxotere which may need to be tightened in the light of the new guidance. But patients who need these drugs, and will benefit, will still get them."

One in 15 men falls victim to prostate cancer.

Taxotere has already been approved - after a five-year study - for use in Scotland to combat the early stages of breast cancer.

But Mr Neate said:

"Breast cancer has achieved strong funding.

We are glad about this.

But now is the time for men with prostate cancer to achieve similar funding."

Liver transplants using live donors, to be offered in Scotland from next spring, could be open to chronically-ill patients from south of the border, if there is enough capacity at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary unit.

john. mccann@ eveningtimes. co. uk

Source: Evening Times; Glasgow (UK)

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