New subcutaneous treatment reduces pain, increases survival chances of breast cancer patients

Breast cancer treatments are usually painful, time consuming and aggressive, which leads to long term hospitalization, medical staff and high economic expenses.

To fight this problem there is a new subcutaneous treatment option for HER2 cancer, which are those tumors that produce an excess in HER2 protein and represent a 20 per cent of the cases.

This new Trastuzumab subcutaneous line reduces pain and increases the survival chances of the patients, even those women that are in metastasis phase, which means that the cancer has moved to other areas.

The traditional Trastuzumab treatment uses an intravenous line and requires the doctor to determine a dose based on the patients weight, which occasionally causes the waste of medicine because the administered amount is less than the one existing in the vials, producing economic loss for both the health institution and the patient.

Furthermore, the administration time is from three to four hours, a situation that is solved with the subcutaneous treatment thanks to the fixed dose that only requires five minutes of placement.

This new method eliminates the pain of placement and it requires fewer members of the medical staff for its administration, which reduces economic expenses.

Doctor Laura Torrecillas, Medical Oncologist assigned to Oncology Services of Centro Médico Nacional 20 de noviembre of ISSSTE, stated that "a patient who is treated with a therapy whose benefits in quality and life expectancy add to a lesser time in administration and less aggressiveness, is a patient who will attach more to her treatment".

Since April this year, subcutaneous Trastuzumab is on the list of the essential medicines and the inputs catalogue of the health system.

In Mexico, according to Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI), during 2014, 29 new cases were diagnosed by every 100 thousand women over 20 years old with breast cancer, and this is the main cause of death by cancer in women in our country.

About this, doctor Juan Pablo Benítez, medical manager of Oncology of Roche, explained that for 15 years the Trastuzumab had been the standard medication treatment for HER2 breast cancer due to its effectiveness, but this new option offers more advantages.

He explained that in 2012 the results of the clinical study HannaH were published, in which it was demonstrated the effectiveness and safety of the subcutaneous Trastuzumab in the treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer.

"Based on the results of this study, the Comisión Federal para la Protección contra Riesgos Sanitarios (Cofepris) granted sanitary registration to the subcutaneous Trastuzumab in 2015".