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Going Off Label: Cancer Drug Saves Sight and Money
– Reported, November 14, 2012
MADISON, Wisc. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — It is the leading cause of legal blindness in older Americans. Every year 250 thousand people in the US are treated for age-related macular degeneration. Now, theres more and more evidence that a cancer drug doctors have been relying on to help patients, works just as well as a much more expensive option.
Harriet Corstvet has a passion for reading about politics.
People dont realize that their opinion is being swayed! Harriet Corstvet told Ivanhoe.
Opthalmologist, Suresh Chandra, is using an injectable colon cancer drug on Harriet to shrink vision-impairing blood vessels in her eye. Its not FDA approved for that, but there is growing evidence Avastin does it just as well as Lucentis, which is approved for AMD.
Avastin had the same visual results at the end as Lucentis, Ophthalmologist at the University of Wisconsin, Dr. Suresh Chandra, MD, told Ivanhoe.
However, Avastin is 50 dollars a dose and Lucentis is two thousand dollars a dose.
A federal report shows in 08 and 09, Medicare paid physicians 1.1 billion dollars for 700 thousand Lucentis treatments and just 40 million for many more Avastin treatments. The doctor says Avastin saves patients with co-pays a lot of money and could save peoples vision in countries where Lucentis is just too expensive.
Harriet said without it, I would have for certain, would have been completely blind.
Avastin and Lucentis are made by the same drug maker. The doctor says the off-label use of Avastin has become the standard of care for AMD, but in 2011, there was concern about using the drug among some doctors. The New York Times reports tainted doses of Avastin left 21 people blind. Dr. Chandra believes the incidents were isolated and is now under control.
