By Matt Kelley (Radio Iowa)
Cancer patients in Iowa are facing delays in potentially-life-saving treatments as two important drugs used in chemotherapy are in very short supply.
Dr. Richard Deming, medical director of the Richard Deming Cancer Center at MercyOne in Des Moines, says almost 50% of the cisplatin and carboplatin used in the U.S. were made by a single factory in India — which recently stopped making those drugs. “The cancers that are most impacted are some very significant cancers,” Deming says, “lung cancer, head and neck cancer, ovarian cancer, and testicular cancer, just to mention a few.”
While those key drugs are being made elsewhere, there’s now such a tight supply and high demand for them that chemotherapy treatments are having to be pushed back. Deming, who founded the Above + Beyond Cancer program in 2011, says nine in ten cancer treatment centers nationwide are being forced to delay treatments.
“Even the delay of a week can cause intense psychosocial distress on patients and their families,” Dr. Deming says. “And if the delay goes into months, then you’re looking at the real possibility that the delay in treatment may impact the overall ability to cure someone of a curable cancer.”
There are strict quality control procedures and protocols for manufacturing these types — and all types — of medicines, and Deming says pharmaceutical companies can’t simply switch over to making these scarce drugs. It’s creating stress for everyone involved, especially the cancer patients.
“So it’s become a real difficulty,” Deming says, “not just in terms of the overall treatment, but in terms of the psychosocial distress that patients are experiencing as they wait to see whether the drug that is the best possible drug to treat their cancer is going to be in supply.” A statement from the American Cancer Society says the shortage of certain cancer drugs has become “a serious and life-threatening issue for cancer patients across the country,” and Deming agrees.
“We are part of a global economy,” he says. “There are advantages to being able to get supplies from the rest of the world but there’s disadvantages as well. This just brings to mind, what do we need to do to make sure that something as crucial as a critical chemotherapy drug is going to be in supply?”
The experts say some of the drugs that are in short supply have -no- effective alternative. An official with the ACS says as first-line treatments for a number of cancers, including some breast cancers, ovarian cancer and leukemia, the shortage could lead to delays in treatment that “could result in worse outcomes.”
A report from the University of Iowa-based Iowa Cancer Registry projects 20,800 Iowans will be diagnosed with cancer this year, and 6,200 will die from it.
