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
All patients in England suffering from a disease which causes blindness are to get access to a sight-saving drug. Lucentis treats age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of sight loss in the country.
The NHS drugs watchdog has loosened the terms of approval for expensive treatments that extend life in patients with a short life expectancy. Drugs that would normally be ruled out of use on the NHS because they did not represent a cost effective use of resources are now more likely to be made available.
NICE has introduced new criteria for appraising end of life treatments. James Raftery looks at how they might affect availability by applying them to previously refused drugs
The NHS's spending watchdog acted unlawfully when it decided to restrict access to drugs that could help thousands of older women with the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis, the high court ruled today. A judge ruled that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) wrongly failed to disclose the economic reasoning behind a decision in October to restrict the supply of strontium ranelate, a drug manufactured by Servier laboratories under the brand name Protelos.
A therapeutic programme hailed by ministers as a hi-tech, cost-effective solution to Britain's growing problem of depression and anxiety has been widely ignored by the NHS, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without access to treatment. Opposition politicians and charities have accused the government of creating a postcode lottery.
Aims: This Handbook represents initial good practice guidance and resources to help PCTs to review current decision-making processes about the funding of medicines with co-operation from Provider Trusts and other stakeholders. Intended audience: Healthcare professionals. Publication history information: Published February 2009. Access: Available to the general public.
The National Library of Guidelines is a collection of guidelines for the NHS. It is based on the guidelines produced by NICE and other national agencies. The main focus of the Library is on guidelines produced in the UK, but where no UK guideline is available, guidelines from other countries are included in the collection. NICE issues guidelines of very high quality. They are based on a systematic review of the evidence and have extensive consultation not only with clinicians but also with patients and, where relevant, industry. Professional associations do not have the resources to carry out this type of consultation but they can follow the principles set out in the AGREE protocol which helps guideline writers minimise bias, meet the needs of all stakeholders and maximise clarity.
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.
A LESBIAN couple have won the right to IVF on the NHS after a legal tussle, ahead of laws that will put same-sex patients on an equal footing with heterosexuals. The couple, who remain anonymous, had to go through a legal fight to push the NHS to fund IVF because, at the moment, individual trusts decide whether they wish to pay for treatment for lesbians. The couple were initially refused IVF by their primary care trust because they were of the same sex. One of the women had polycystic ovarian syndrome, which disrupts ovulation, and is one of the most common causes of infertility. From October, clinics will no longer be able to block lesbians by referring to a child’s “need for a father”. Instead, same-sex couples will need to demonstrate only that they can offer “supportive parenting”.
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.
The 2009 Equality Bill will, if enacted, make age based discrimination in the provision of health care and social care illegal for the first time in the United Kingdom. In a speech in 2008, the then health secretary, Alan Johnson, said, "Old age is the new middle age. Health and social care services need to adapt to the changing needs of today’s older people . . . to promote health in old age and help older people to maintain independence and quality of life."
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.