NHS proton beam therapy refusal led to child patient disappearance
pharmafile | September 1, 2014 | News story | Sales and Marketing | Ashya King, Cancer, NHS, proton beam
The parents of child cancer patient Ashya King say they took him from hospital because NHS doctors would not offer him proton beam therapy.
Ashya’s disappearance from his Southampton hospital recently sparked an international search. He and his parents Brett and Naghemeh King were eventually found in Spain, where Ashya was transferred to a Spanish hospital.
Brett King says in a YouTube video that they ‘pleaded’ with doctors in Southampton to be considered for proton beam therapy, which is thought to have fewer side effects than other forms of treatment.
In the UK the NHS currently only offers the treatment for rare eye cancers, though it considers funding patients to go abroad to receive the treatment on a case-by-case basis.
King was told that for Ashya’s kind of cancer it would have ‘no benefit whatsoever’. He says that his own research contradicts this claim, and blames the doctors at the hospital for ‘ignoring’ his attempts to provide input.
Ashya has a rare type of brain tumour known as medulloblastoma, which occurs more often in children than adults. It is usually treated with radiotherapy, but as the x-rays used in this treatment don’t discriminate between normal and cancerous tissue they can cause damage to otherwise healthy cells as they travel through the brain.
This is particularly dangerous for children, whose developing bodies are much more susceptible to harm from radiation. The early exposure to radiation may even increase the chance of the child developing a second cancer in later life.
Proton beam therapy, on the other hand, uses large particle accelerators to generate beams of protons, the positively-charged particles found in the nucleus of an atom, and target cancer cells. Unlike x-rays, proton beams do not carry on through the body after they have hit their target, reducing the chances of damaging healthy tissue.
Patients wishing to have proton beam therapy must have their cases reviewed by an NHS panel, who decide whether or not to pay for the cost of having the treatment abroad. This can cost the NHS around £100,000 per patient. The NHS funds patients for treatment abroad on a case-by-case basis.
412 patients out of 546 referrals have been approved for treatment by since the programme was established in 2008, including 293 children.
The therapy is only thought to be suitable for around 1% of patients in the UK – mostly children and people with neck cancers, spinal tumours, sarcomas and brain tumours – and its efficacy and side effects are still not fully understood due to the low numbers of people who have actually received the treatment.
Centres for the treatment in London and Manchester are due to open in April 2018, however, after a Department of Health investment of £250 million.
Ashya’s parents have been arrested in Spain and are facing possible extradition to the UK.
George Underwood
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