Study: Chemotherapy May Lead To Less Peaceful Death

[Jesus Malverde]

More than half of end-stage cancer patients receive chemotherapy during the last few months of their life, and those who received such treatment were more likely to die in a hospital intensive care unit, hooked to a ventilator, rather than at home as they would have preferred, says a new study.

Patients were also less likely to have discussed their end of life wishes with their oncologist compared to other end-stage cancer patients who opted not to continue chemotherapy.

Researchers say doctors have a hard time initiating conversations with their patients, especially those dying from metastatic cancer.

“There’s a subtle dance that happens between oncologist and patient,” Dr. Alexi Wright, an assistant professor of medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the study’s lead author, told the Boston Globe. “Where doctors don’t want to broach the subject of dying, especially in younger patients, because it makes those patients think we’re giving up on them.”

Wright and her team of researchers studied 386 terminally ill cancer patients. They found that the 56 percent that had chemotherapy tended to be younger, better educated, richer, and more optimistic about their prognosis.

The patients died within an average of four months after participating in the study.

Sixty-five percent died in their preferred place; as compared to 80 percent of those who chose to stop treatments. The researchers found that those taking chemotherapy were more likely to die in a hospital intensive care unit rather than at home and were more likely to get placed on a ventilator. Most were referred to hospice within a week of their death.

http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2014/03/08/study-chemotherapy-may-lead-to-less-peaceful-death/

[Loudly]

1. It's not about peace. It's about profit. n/t

[jsr]

2. The oncologist's creed: "There's a gold mine in them cancer patients"

Milk them dry while they're alive, make sure they're bankrupt when they die.

[lostincalifornia]

3. It should be noted that some chemotherapy is extremely effective. Gleevec is one example

http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/gleevec-the-breakthrough-in-cancer-treatment-565

The only point I am making is patients have to inform themselves of the actual benefits or not of a particular therapy. It is called an informed decision.

The troubling issue is that many of these cancer drugs cost over 100K a year. Some patients appear able to survive with chronic myeloid leukemia indefinitely, as long as they have access to the expensive medications.

Drug companies claim it cost 1.3-1.7 billion to develop these drugs, though some independent experts put it as low as 60 - 90 million.

This includes costs of development for FDA approval, other drugs that failed approval, and ancillary expenses such as clinical trials, bonuses, salaries, infrastructures, royalties, advertising, and other perks to the doctors who prescribe the drugs.

Once a company sells about a billion dollars of a medication, most of the rest is profit.

In addition, much of the initial discovery costs are funded by non-profit entities involved in basic research. After the first two years of a drug lunch the costs of development are usually more than paid back.

Before the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 an affordability factor contrained how much pharmaceutical companies could charge. This changed in response to intensive lobbying by pharmaceutical interst that resulted in the federal government paying full retail price for cancer drugs, and prohibiting the federal government from negotiating a lower price.

The ACA continues this practice