CALGARY- A judge is sharing her very personal battle with cancer, in hopes her story will help others.
Justice Kristine Eidsvik took a simple genetic test called Oncotype-DX, which looks at genetic markets in a tumor to predict how aggressive the cancer is.
She learned there was only an 11 per cent chance her cancer would reoccur, meaning chemotherapy was not necessary. However, the $4,200 test is not covered by Alberta healthcare-something she wants to see changed.
“They don’t have enough room for the chemotherapy patients they even have, and yet there are about 20 per cent patients in my category,” she says. “It could have been me going in for chemotherapy that is useless.”
Dr. Sandy Sehdev, a medical oncologist in Brampton says the test has proven to be a cost saver.
“We found that the cost of giving chemotherapy can be quite expensive for the system. Even though these genetic tests are quite expensive, overall to the system they seem to save us money by lowering the number of patients we have to treat with chemotherapy.”
The test is currently being reviewed by the Alberta Health Technologies decision process. Several other provinces including Ontario and Saskatchewan already cover the cost of the test.
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