NHS world first rollout of cancer jab that cuts treatment time by up to 75%
england.nhs.uk
england.nhs.uk
> It usually takes around 30 minutes to administer intravenous atezolizumab, but for some patients this can be up to an hour when it can be difficult to access a vein.
If someone's going to be getting a lot of infusions and having a lot of blood drawn, the hospitals I'm familiar with in America place PICC lines (Peripherally-Inserted Central Catheters) for short-term use almost immediately and implantable ports (Port-A-Caths) for long-term use not very long after. Both of these involve running a plastic tube (the catheter) to a major blood vessel called the superior vena cava, with the difference in how the "near end" of the catheter terminates: the PICC is run in through the arm (left in my case) and terminates outside the body, leaving a permanent wound that must be dressed and managed, whereas an implantable port terminates in a plastic triangle that is surgically implanted under the skin and must be accessed with a needle.
Anyway, both of these terminations are easy to find, and in my experience are universal among the cancer patients I've seen in infusion centers. They're nerve-wracking to put in and accessing an implanted port is still a needle stick, but they're nicer than poking holes in your vasculature.
Aside from that, atezolizumab is a monoclonal antibody (you can tell because of the "mab" at the end of the generic name) which allows the immune system to recognize cancer cells as Other and move in for the kill. I personally got rituximab in most of my chemotherapy regimens.
Finally, I wonder how much time this saves, given that the other drugs in the regimens atezolizumab is part of will have to be given by the bagful, and in slow, measured infusions. Getting this down from 30 minutes to seven isn't a huge gain if the next few bags take a few hours apiece.
Edited to add:
> It is anticipated the majority of the approximately 3,600 patients starting treatment of atezolizumab annually in England will switch onto the time-saving injection. However, where patients are receiving intravenous chemotherapy in combination with atezolizumab, they may remain on the transfusion.
Ah. OK, I missed this. Apparently not all of the targeted patients are on regimens, just this one drug, so that helps a lot.
The very first infusion in my case triggered such a nasty allergic reaction that they settled on a 24h infusion duration, thank god I had a port. Fun times
DA-EPOCH-R in my case, but if you're good with anagrams EPOCH is CHOP + E, and it is indeed a derivative regimen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPOCH_(chemotherapy)
(For everyone else: This Wikipedia page contains a list of all the drugs involved and information about how long it takes to infuse them. Note the multiple 24-hour bags, which isn't a feature of every regimen but required me to be admitted to a hospital room for each round and explains why I was a bit skeptical that getting one drug down to a few minutes instead of a half-hour was so big.)
> The very first infusion in my case triggered such a nasty allergic reaction that they settled on a 24h infusion duration, thank god I had a port. Fun times
Yep, chemotherapy is a whole mass of weird side-effects. Vincristine gave me a droopy left eye and the oxaliplatin in the R-GemOx I got as second-line therapy made cold things feel like they were covered in sharp spikes. I'm glad I never had a serious allergic reaction.