Cancer patients could be better treated and State healthcare costs slashed with new technology that predicts a patient’s response to treatments, a leading specialist said today.
Professor Ken O'Byrne, consultant medical oncologist at St James's Hospital, Dublin, urged the Government to install the molecular biology testing equipment in a handful of Irish hospitals.
The emerging science, which is already being routinely used in Canada and parts of the US, could improve the quality of cancer care, lengthen some lives and save others, according to the top cancer doctor.
But also, because it will cut down on expensive drugs given to patients who are not best suited to the medication, it will lead to vast savings for the health service, he claimed.
"Now, we don't know how to identify which patients will benefit and which patients will not from certain treatments. The new technology will enable us to do that," he said.
"It will target the right treatment to the right patient.
"This will lead to an improved outcome for the patient, reduced exposure to treatment that won't be effective for the patient and ultimately, as a result, cost savings for hospitals and the community."
Prof O'Byrne, President of the British Thoracic Oncology Group (BTOG), was speaking at the organisation's annual conference, in Clontarf Castle, north Dublin.
The consultant believes the technology could be introduced in Ireland almost straight away for lung cancer treatment in particular, but that the principle would be the same for other cancers in time.
"We believe the Government needs to look at investing in placing diagnostic tests in hospitals to allow us to do these tests to identify what patients will benefit from different treatments, particularly the more expensive treatments," he said.
"Patients would be getting what they should be getting for their disease, and won't be getting sick from drugs that aren't suited to them.
"And, at the same time because the drugs we use are very, very expensive — even chemotherapy can be anything between €20,000 to €50,000 a year — by making sure that the patient will benefit from it, there'll be huge savings in drug costs."
The technology looks at the cancer, proteins and genes that can determine the capacity of the tumour to grow or make it resistant to some treatments.
"In other words, how that cancer is going to behave. Is it going to behave in an aggressive way or in a relatively dormant way," said Prof O'Byrne.
"If we can identify, for example, at the time of diagnosis that a patient will be resistant to chemotherapy then there's no point in giving it to them.
"Likewise, if we see a patient will be very responsive to chemotherapy, then we shouldn't withhold that from them. It's about identifying which patients will benefit best from the therapeutic options that we have available to us."
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