Opdivo and Keytruda entered our country in 2016 as the first medicines from an entirely new class that would ‘spectacularly’ increase the chance of survival, and with which patients with metastatic cancers would still be cured. The treatment officially costs more than 100,000 euros per patient per year.
An analysis of the data of more than 9,000 Belgian cancer patients by the Intermutualist Agency (IMA) sheds new light on its effectiveness. Half of the patients who received Opdivo between 2016 and 2018 died within a year of starting the treatment. By 2019, nearly 70 percent had died. There are similar results with Keytruda. The IMA also notes that nearly one in ten patients had died within the month. According to the IMA, this suggests that “in a number of cases, treatment is started when this is no longer opportune”.
