The National Insitute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) have approved new drugs to treat lung and stomach cancer for NHS Funding. Around 38,000 people every year are diagnosed with lung cancer and as such it is one of the most common cancers in the UK. The most common form is non-small cell lung cancer accounting for around 80% of all cases. Stomach cancer affects approximately 8,200 people in the UK every year.
Gefitnib going under the name Iressa is the latest lung cancer drug to be approved by NICE, patients with locally advanced or metastatic non-small-cell cancer will be eligible fo for the NHS Funded drug so long as tests show they have a particular form of the disease.
Patients with locally advanced or metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer will be eligible for gefitinib (trade name Iressa) if tests show they have a particular form of the disease.
Stomach cancer patients with inoperable forms of the disease will through the NHS have access to another recently approved drug going under the trade name Xeloda.
Both drugs will help patients to live a more normal life during their treatment, the Health Technology Centre director at NICE, Dr Longson stated that as Iressa is taken in tablet form it can be taken by patients in the comfort of their own home helping patients to carry on with their normal daily activities. The stomach cancer drug Xeloda will require the patient to make fewer hospital visits again helping the individual to lead a more normal life during the treatment.
A final appraisal determination will now have to take place for both drugs with final guidance to be published later this year. On the final guidance being issued the PrCTs will have 3 months in which to make funding available granting local patients to access the drugs.
