Nationwide cancer drug shortages in US cause concern for doctors
3 Min Read
Professionals stated the United States is presently experiencing one of the most acute shortages of chemotherapy medications in three decades.
-
A nurse places a patient's chemotherapy medication on an intravenous stand at a hospital in Philadelphia, United States on August 4, 2015. (AP)
Toni Dezomits, a 55-year-old retired cop, is battling a recurrence of her stage 4 ovarian cancer. She'd already had numerous rounds of chemotherapy when her doctor called with awful news.
Dezomits was alerted a day before her third round of chemotherapy last month that there was a countrywide shortage of carboplatin, one of three drugs she was supposed to get, causing her to finish her final sessions with only two of the drugs since switching the third for another medication meant stronger side effects.
"You have these two sub-optimal choices," she stated, adding that she was "worried" because she knew the old drug she received responded well to her cancer.
Read more: New drug could stop breast cancer variant from returning by 25%
According to professionals, the United States is experiencing one of the most acute shortages of chemotherapy medications in three decades.
Julie Gralow, chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, stated that Dezomits is one of 100,000 patients who are affected.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said last week that over 130 medications were in limited supply, 14 of which were cancer therapies.
A variety of circumstances, according to experts, have led to the shortages, which have this time notably impacted two front-line medicines - carboplatin and cisplatin - used to treat a variety of malignancies, including head and neck, gynecologic, and gastrointestinal cancers.
The most recent shortfall resulted from the closure of an Indian company that provided cisplatin ingredients to all US producers owing to quality issues. According to Dr. Gralow, this increased demand for carboplatin, a replacement medicine.
Some providers have been compelled to lengthen the time between patients' chemotherapy sessions, and other patients have had to drive several hours to multiple cancer clinics for treatment, something Dezomits had to do.
According to Dezomits, "This country should be a little better than that. We should be able to get life-saving drugs that cost about $9 or $10 a dose."
Karen Knudsen, CEO of the American Cancer Society believes that the cheap cost of generic front-line cancer medications has contributed to periodic chemotherapy drug shortages. While the drugs are inexpensive to produce pharmaceutical corporations are not motivated to do so because they do not generate substantial revenues.
The medicine scarcity problem has also worsened as life expectancy in the United States has grown, which means more people are getting cancer.
The FDA began negotiating with a Chinese producer this week to import one of the chemotherapy medications to help alleviate supply chain constraints, something Knudsen believes will assist in the alleviation of some short-term supply problems in the coming months, but it will do nothing to address a more cyclical problem of chemotherapy medication shortages. "An emergency solution is being put into place, but we are at a moment in time where there needs to be a more durable solution," she stated.
According to medical professionals, the US government should collaborate with the business sector to develop more long-term solutions. "It's already stressful enough to deal with cancer and your mortality," Dezomits divulged. "This is just another obstacle in front of patients that now they've got to think about."
