Hello, my mum has been having Avastin self funded for approx 21 months now. It does seem to be working as everything has remained stable throughout this period.
The question is, when does she stop? Shes gone past the recommended 22 cycles. It’s costing her around £500 a week at the moment to have the drug. Does the drug start to become ineffective?
Any experience or knowledge about this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you x
My understanding is that there is no cap on the number of treatments when you're self-funding. It's a case of as long as it seems to be working, there are no concerning side effects, and you have the money.
Sorry, Suzie, I can't really help here as I missed the opportunity to get Avastin via NHS so I would really be interested in whether it's a maintenance drug that works long-term. Has anybody been given it, had good results, been taken off it, had cancer recur? Hope your Mum's still doing ok. Oh check out this thread: healthunlocked.com/ovacome/...
xx
My understanding is NHS funds a fixed number of sessions per person once, but in reality the optimum number may very for each person. And also repeating it after a recurrence may be beneficial. I got this from a talk by Prof Jaysen a couple of years ago. He was doing a trial with an extra blood test to explore this. Might be worth contacting him? I think he is at the Christie?
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