[How to finance chemotherapy with new cancer drugs? / Comment financer l'utilisation de nouveaux médicaments de chimiothérapie?

Recently developed drugs are ten to one hundred fold more costly than the chemotherapies of the past while the number of eligible patients and the average duration of treatments are ever increasing. The combined effect of these trends makes budgeting a daunting task, in particular for hospitals with budgetary allocation. Balancing budgets became difficult with the arrival of taxanes, but innovative therapies based on biotechnological advances will further increase the financial slide. Hospital running costs can not be infinitely reduced. Therefore, new rules that govern the financing of innovative therapies become mandatory and budgetary allocations based on DRG evaluations will no longer be feasible.

[Analysis of hematopoietic growth factor prescriptions in 19 french cancer centers]. / Analyse de la prescription de facteurs de croissance hématopoïétique dans 19 centres anticancéreux français. Groupe de pharmaciens de la Fédération nationale des centres de lutte contre le cancer.

Medical prescription of hematopoietic growth factors (HGF) was analysed in 19 anticancer french centers during 2 months. About 4% of anticancer chemotherapeutic cycles prescribed during this period were supported by HGF prescription. The mean duration of treatment was 8 days. Among the 755 collected prescriptions, two tumor localizations represented about 50% of the prescriptions: malignant non Hodgkin lymphomas and breast cancer. The other main localizations concerned adult or pediatric soft tissue sarcomas (18%), testicular cancer (7%) and gynecologic tumors (6%). The prescription for primary prophylaxis for febrile neutropenia remains the main use of HGF (44%). The respect of the guidelines established by the F|d|ration nationale des centres de lutte contre le cancer was analyzed. Overall, 66% of the prescriptions were in adequation with these guidelines. Whereas the consommation of HGF decreased in the 19 considered institutions, it did not reach a plateau and could decrease in institutions which are awaked to the international and national recommendations.