The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence proposes to reject a breast cancer drug despite its own rule changes on end-of-life treatments Wednesday 21 October 2009 18.11 BST A drug which can give women with advanced breast cancer extra weeks or months of life has been turned down by a government watchdog body for use in the NHS. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) says it proposes to reject Tyverb (lapatinib) in spite of changes in the rules brought in specifically to allow people at the end of their lives to have the chance of new and often expensive treatments. Tyverb is the only drug licensed for women with advanced breast cancer whose tumours test positive for a protein called HER2 and for whom Herceptin, a Nice-approved drug, is no longer working. In much of the rest of Europe, Tyverb is then given, in combination with a standard chemotherapy drug called capecitabine.
The government says it will ban all private transplants of organs from dead donors in the UK. The move comes after media reports of overseas patients paying to get onto the waiting list for organs donated by British people. An independent report said organs were scarce and no one should be able to pay for transplants, to ensure NHS patients did not miss out. Surgeons said it should reassure people organs went to those in most need.
A trainee teacher with primary refractory Hodgkin’s lymphoma has launched a High Court action against her primary care trust, NHS Surrey, which has refused to pay for her treatment with an unlicensed drug. Philippa Bigham, aged 28, from Frimley, Surrey, has been given a prognosis of two years’ survival without a bone marrow transplantation. But her medical team at the Royal Free Hospital in London want her to have treatment with radiolabelled basiliximab, a monoclonal antibody conjugated with radioactive iodine and also known as CHT-25, before she has the transplantation. The primary care trust has refused to pay for the drug, which costs £3000 ({euro}3500; $4900) for a course of treatment. Basiliximab is licensed in the United Kingdom for use in renal transplant rejection but the radiolabelled version is not yet licensed.
The confidentiality of medical records is threatened by government plans to relax laws on data protection, doctors' leaders told the Guardian yesterday. Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the British Medical Association, said the profession was "extremely concerned" about legislation tabled by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, which would allow the Department of Health to share information on NHS databases with other ministries and private companies.
A woman died after an experienced surgeon unintentionally attempted to take out the wrong organ during an operating theatre complication. Amy Joyce Francis, 77, was due to have a kidney removed at the Royal Gwent Hospital in July 2010 but instead the surgeon tried to remove her liver. The woman from Newport suffered a fatal heart attack after a loss of blood. The coroner recorded a narrative verdict which was fully accepted by the Aneurin Bevan Health Board.
Satisfaction with NHS is high but it may be bad news Satisfaction with the NHS has been rising steadily for the past decade and is at an all-time high – but that could spell bad news for patients. The more satisfied patients are with their medical care, the more likely they are to die, US researchers have found.
Doctors' leaders warn situation could diminish patient trust and lead to more NHS services being run by private operators. GPs preparing to take charge of £60bn of NHS funds have been found to have shareholdings in private healthcare firms, prompting alarm about family doctors profiting from direct conflicts of interest.
The NICE clinical guideline on fertility covers: * the best forms of treatment for people who have problems getting pregnant * ways of treating people who have a known condition or reason for their fertility problems * ways of treating people when no reason for their fertility problems can be found
he NHSLA is a Special Health Authority (part of the NHS), responsible for handling negligence claims made against NHS bodies in England. In addition to dealing with claims when they arise, we have an active risk management programme to help raise standards of care in the NHS and hence reduce the number of incidents leading to claims. We also monitor human rights case-law on behalf of the NHS through our Human Rights Act Information Service. Since April 2005 we have been responsible for handling family health services appeals and in August 2005 we acquired the further function of co-ordinating equal pay claims on behalf of the NHS.
GPs have been paid for thousands of patients on their lists who have moved practice, died or been forced to leave the country, according to a report by the Audit Commission.
'A new pathway for the regulation and governance of health research' was published in January 2011. The report was prepared by a working group, chaired by Professor Sir Michael Rawlins FMedSci, convened in response to an invitation from Government to review the regulation and governance of UK health research involving human participants, their tissue or their data. The report proposes four key principles that should underpin the regulation and governance framework around health research in the UK, and makes recommendations to: * Create a new Health Research Agency (HRA) to rationalise the regulation and governance of all health research. * Include within the HRA a new National Research Governance Service to facilitate timely approval of research studies by NHS Trusts. * Improve the UK environment for clinical trials. * Provide access to patient data that protects individual interests and allows approved research to proceed effectively. * Embed a culture that value