Patients with rheumatoid arthritis who have failed everything else may respond to abatacept
- نوع فایل : کتاب
- زبان : انگلیسی
- مؤلف : Isma¸l Atchia & David Walker
- چاپ و سال / کشور: 2010
Description
National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) have decided that abatacept (ORENCIA®, Bristol- Myers Squibb) is not recommended for the treatment of RA because it is not cost effective in the UK [1]. Other similarly priced biological drugs have received approval [2], but inevitably some patients will fail to respond to all of these. We as rheumatologists are left with no options approved by NICE, and yet we know that other drugs exist that may be of benefit to our patients. The only option is to try and secure funding from the primary care trust (PCT) for compassionate use of one of these “non-recommended” drugs and often this is denied. We report here two patients where compassionate use was approved by the PCT and the patients responded in contrast to their previous experience.
Clin Rheumatol Received: 29 June 2010 / Accepted: 1 September 2010
