Don't give out cancer drugs if it's just to extend life: Treatment costs can't be justified, say experts



NHS spends £5bn annually on cancer treatments up from £3bn in 2002



Around 310,000 Britons a year are diagnosed with cancer



Patients with terminal cancer should not be given life-extending drugs, doctors said yesterday.



The treatments give false hope and are too costly for the public purse, they warned.



The group of 37 cancer experts, including British specialist Karol Sikora, claimed a 'culture of excess' had led doctors to 'overtreat, overdiagnose and overpromise'.

Killer: Some 310,000 Britons a year are diagnosed with cancer - by 2030 it could be 400,000

Campaigners dismissed the report, saying it was wrong to write off cancer victims.



'I would hardly call this type of treatment futile,' said Rose Woodward, of the James Whale Fund for Kidney Cancer.

Breast cancer cells: A group of cancer experts said doctors over-diagnose and over-promise

'We have kidney cancer patients on a life-prolonging drug called Sutent who have been told they have only two to three weeks to live but who go on to live for a further five years.'

Around 310,000 Britons a year are diagnosed with cancer. But by 2030 this is expected to have risen to 400,000 as an ageing population succumbs to the disease.

The NHS spends well over £5billion annually on cancer treatments, up from £3billion in 2002.



In the journal Lancet Oncology, the expert group warned many of the costly drugs produced by manufacturers brought little value.



They said patients were offered treatment even where there was little evidence it was of use.



Instead, money should be invested in better scans and tests to determine whether a tumour is beatable, leaving 'difficult decisions' as to who gets treatment.







'We clearly would want to spare the patient the toxicity and false hope associated with such treatment, as well as the expense,' the experts told the European multidisciplinary cancer congress in Stockholm.



The doctors point out that many patients do not want to spend their final days undergoing exhausting chemotherapy in hospital and would rather be at home surrounded by loved ones.



But a spokesman for the Rarer Cancers Foundation said: 'Describing all treatments near the end of life as futile is tantamount to writing patients off.

The life-prolonging drug called Sutent which is given to kidney cancer patients. Right, Karol Sikora who is one of the 37 experts who warn that the cost of cancer treatments cannot be justified



'Just because they cannot be "cured" does not mean that we cannot give them valuable treatment, care and support.'



'Describing all treatments near the end of life as futile is tantamount to writing patients off. Just because they cannot be "cured" does not mean that we cannot give them valuable treatment, care and support'



RARER CANCERS FOUNDATION





Ian Beaumont of Bowel Cancer UK said money was not the sole issue.

'While cancer care can be expensive, it is unjust to put a cost on the lives of patients, especially when modern treatments can often give them precious time with their loved ones and increase their length and quality of life,' he added.



Only last week a pill for prostate cancer, Abiraterone, was made available in the UK for the first time at a cost of £35,000 a patient.



Although on average it only extends lives by a few weeks, some patients survive for five years.

Similarly, Avastin, which is used to treat advanced bowel cancer and some other tumours, was initially thought to extend survival by an average of only six weeks.



But some patients are still alive five years later and tumours have not returned.



Barbara Moss was given months to live when she was diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer that had spread to her liver in November 2006.



She paid for Avastin privately and the drug shrank the tumours so much that they were small enough to be removed by surgery. She lived an extra five years .