Thank you to everyone who took part in our survey back in March ahead of the NICE review on RA drugs. With your help, these drugs are still available, however, the criteria to access them remains unchanged. NICE are missing the opportunity to improve patient care (read more on this at bit.ly/1QYFVa9).
We are now asking them to widen the eligibility criteria (in line with the rest of Western Europe) which would allow more people to access these life changing drugs.
We need to hear from people in the UK with 'moderate to severe' rheumatoid arthritis (DAS score somewhere between 3.2 and 5.1) who are NOT currently eligible for biologic therapy.
Your experiences will accompany our submission to NICE relating to the Multiple Technology Appraisal consultation document which was published for public consultation recently.
My two DAS28 scores were 4.6 and 4,8 but I was still put on a Biologic. Is it true that if a consultant thinks it could be detrimental to your healthto not go through with different treatments that they can over rule the NICE or is it to do with funding within Health Authorities?
Overall I would say that consultants treat these guidelines as something that is set in stone, but if they feel there are very good grounds to treat a patient differently, they can submit an individual request for funding for that patient, though they need to give good grounds for this and the funding then has to be approved, so I don't think it happens very often.
Also, if someone has a condition other than RA (sometimes as well as their RA), which can be treated with biologics, they may have different criteria to meet in order to start a biologic drug. I obviously can't comment on why in your particular case you were able to start a biologic dug (though it might be something to ask your rheumatology team about if you're curious), but hopefully this gives you an idea of some of the possible reasons for the guidelines not to be followed.
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