Oral chemotherapy can be used at home. This type of cancer treatment gives the cancer patient a sense of comfort and security. Importantly, it does not cause baldness. Oral chemotherapy is used to treat breast cancer, colorectal cancer and non-small cell lung cancer.

Oral chemotherapyis only possible in some cases of cancer. The rest of the cancer patients still have to wait while using intravenous chemotherapy, althoughchemotherapy in tabletshas a future. Modern treatment is only available to those lucky enough to be in the so-called therapeutic programs.

Oral chemotherapy reduces suffering

Cytostatics - highly toxic drugs are the basis of cancer pharmacotherapy. After a fresh dose of chemotherapy, the patient develops inhuman fatigue and difficult to control sleepiness, nausea or vomiting. In addition, the veins are calcified after long treatment, it is difficult to find one into which a needle can be inserted. Intravenous chemotherapy also has a bad effect on the psyche of patients. Besides, it is not known what is more debilitating - the disease or the method of its treatment. Someone will say - such therapy. I will answer - it does not have to be that way. Cancer can be treated at home with tablets, such as diabetes. Swallowing a tablet gives you the impression (even if illusory) that this disease is not so terrible. This is an important moment in cancer therapy in which the patient's attitude is of great importance. If a person is shown that he can heal himself, he becomes stronger, believes that he is in control of the disease and that his stress related to fighting cancer is not so great, it is not so devastating. In addition, oral chemotherapy does not cause hair loss, which is extremely important, especially for women.

Oral chemotherapy - home therapy

It is based on the fact that the patient takes medication at home and shows up at the hospital only once a month for specialist checkups. On a daily basis, she is under the care of a general practitioner and performs blood tests in her clinic. This is important.

The toxicity of cytostatics towards the hematopoietic system is very high. Therefore, the blood should be tested before the next dose of chemistry in the tablet. If the result is bad, taking the drug is postponed until the blood condition improves. Modern treatment is very convenient for the patient.This was confirmed by Italian studies, where a group of patients treated initially intravenously and then orally was interviewed. 90 percent chose oral therapy. "If you take cancer pills, it's easier to live with," they repeated. Currently, this form of treatment is used only in patients with breast cancer and non-small cell lung cancer. Soon, such a chance will also appear for patients with colorectal cancer, who will also receive reimbursement for an oral drug.

According to an expertdoc. dr hab. Tadeusz Pieńkowski, oncologist

Patients with a complicated form of cancer or those with other ailments do not receive consent from the National He alth Fund for free therapy. The purely medical arguments are irrelevant. Oncological treatment in Poland is based on the so-called chemotherapy program directory. It contains about 500 items divided into the so-called medical diagnoses to which specific medical procedures and medications are assigned. Anything that goes beyond this is treated as a medical experiment and the NHF does not reimburse money for the treatment. Modern oncological treatment consists in combining various methods, e.g. chemotherapy and radiation. But this is also forbidden by the payer, considering that it is a medical experiment. The fact that a person thus has a chance to recover is irrelevant. Treatment of neoplastic disease should always be tailored to the needs of a specific person, the existence of other ailments and their entire situation. It is not uncommon for pregnant women, adolescents and children to develop cancer. They are refused treatment with pills because … the manufacturer did not provide for such treatment. So the Fund does not agree to the therapy, explaining that there are no studies confirming the effectiveness of the treatment. Fortunately, in critical situations, with the patient's consent, new drugs are administered.

Oral chemotherapy pays off

The use of cytostatics is still more often decided not by doctors, but by NHF officials. It is they who distribute the money and they still have doubts whether it pays off? Yes! The experience of countries where actual treatment costs count. For example, the English have shown that by giving oral chemotherapy you can get a higher standard of service for other patients - those who need hospital care the most. On average, for one hundred patients treated with oral chemotherapy, the hospital saves 280 days of staff work. The French compared the costs of intravenous and oral therapy with the same drug. The second turned out to be cheaper, although you pay more for the oral drug! The price of a milligram of active substance is the same, regardless of the form in which it is administered. But producing a wire-safe onethe digestive system, the capsule into which the cytostatic can be enclosed is expensive. With oral therapy, the bioavailability of the drug is approx. 40%. (with intravenous 100%), therefore the tablet should contain twice as much active substance. So it is more expensive, but only seemingly. When the cost of medical care, nursing care, disposable equipment is added to the price of an intravenous drug, and the risk of infections and treatment of vein calcifications arising after multiple punctures are taken into account, the bill argues for oral therapy. The French and the English were convinced by the economy. How will it be in Poland?

Problem

In Poland, cancer patients have the worst access to treatment in Europe. They are waiting for a diagnosis, surgery, medications, and radiation therapy. As much as 42 percent does not survive 5 years from the diagnosis of the disease. There are no such dramatic statistics in any European country. There, on average, about 120 euros are spent on the treatment of one patient per year. In Poland, only EUR 34 is spent per capita for this purpose. Out of the 20 million euro that is allocated to he alth care in Poland annually, only 1.3 million is allocated to oncological treatment, of which less than 10 percent. is spent on drugs.

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Category:

Oncology