(Washington Post) June 5, 2018 - New treatments are expensive and experimental, but they sure seem worth it.
Read ArticleThomas Marsland, MD (Posted: June 06, 2018)
So back to the grind stone... in clinic today after and exciting ASCO AM. But as this article suggest there is no free lunch. All of these great exciting life prolonging therapies come at a great cost. The theme of the meeting was personalized care and certainly this offers opportunities to help control the costs but even there with the new (FDA approved) next generation testing we still are often left with many expensive choices for a given patient with really no knowledge of success rates. But there is I think hope on the horizon. I had the chance to meet with a group that is developing highly sophisticated computer programs that can actually predict which of the many mutations noted by the ngs testing will really result in a therapy with a high success rate. (and the flip side avoid those that don't.) The data bases are quite sophisticated and developed from true clinical trial materials. When these types of programs become universally available we really will have the idea of "personalized" therapy come to fruition. Then hopefully these costly treatments will be given to those who truly will benefit.
Professor of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Medical O...
Professor and Director, Division of Hematology Oncology...