Certainly for a good while yet - but once Exanta (because that is presumably
what you are referring to) becomes available (and that will take perhaps 3-5
years) it will be a damn sight more expensive than warfarin. The price of
the drug was estimated at USD3/patient/day last September, compared with a
few pence for warfarin. With an average GP list size of 1800, say, and an
average 1.5% of patients on warfarin that means an additional £18500 PER GP
on top of the annual drug budget by my calculations.
OK, so you save the cost of monitoring INR etc, but even those savings won't
stack up against the price of the drug.
What seems likely to happen is that Exanta will remain in use for those
patients who are difficult to control on warfarin or who have some adverse
reaction to the usual treatment.
Robert
> -----Original Message-----
> From: GP-UK [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Canning
> But how much longer will warfarin be the treatment and INR the monitoring?
|