The immunotherapy drug Keytruda will now be reimbursed in four new indications for cancer. Better tolerated than chemotherapy, this treatment has very good results in terms of patient survival.
Effective but very expensive. The Keytruda® (pembrolizumab), the injection of which costs 5,200 euros in France, is now reimbursed by Health Insurance in four new indications: lung cancer small cell lung disease (CBPC) even in the absence of metastasis, the bladder cancer, the melanoma before surgery and the Hodgkin’s lymphoma in case of therapeutic failure.
This treatment was already reimbursed for patients with melanoma and metastatic lung cancer since 2017. In total, all of these indications would concern some 16,000 French patients.
Read also : Immunotherapy against cancer: your questions, our answers
Boost the body’s immune system
What does this treatment with Keytruda® correspond to? The principle ofimmunotherapy is to stimulate immune defenses so that they defend themselves better against cancer cells.
The treatment is carried out on an outpatient basis, that is to say without hospitalization, by means of an intravenous injection lasting a few hours once or twice a month. The Keytruda® can be used alone or in addition to a chemotherapy.
Extend patient life expectancy
Its advantages are certain: it is better tolerated than chemotherapy and has very good results in terms of survival and longer life expectancy. The most dramatic are currently seen in patients with lung cancer.
At the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in June 2019, researchers presented a study published later in the Journal of Clinical Oncology involving patients with lung cancer. Keytruda® taken first-line or after other treatment was associated with an increase in survival of 38.9 months and 16.8 months, respectively.
In his 2019 balance sheet, the independent medical journal Prescribe recognizes the usefulness of pembrolizumab for prolonging survival in metastasized bronchial cancer.
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