Drug ads may not alter most cancer patients' care

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study suggests that most cancer patients have seen ads for various drugs used against their disease, but it may ultimately have little impact on their treatment.

Consumer ads for prescription drugs have shot up since 1997, when U.S. regulators began allowing them to run on TV and radio.

The trend is controversial, with supporters arguing that the ads empower patients, and opponents worrying that the ads are misleading or spur unnecessary prescriptions.

Given that cancer drugs are highly specialized, expensive and can have significant side effects, the use of consumer ads in this area of medicine is particularly contentious.

To see how ads may be affecting cancer patients, researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston surveyed 348 patients treated at their center for breast cancer or blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma.

Overall, 86 percent said they had seen cancer-related drug ads, mostly on television. Often, the ads they remembered were for "supportive" therapies used to deal with the side effects of chemotherapy -- such as Procrit, which treats anemia, and Neulasta, which helps prevent infections in patients on immune-suppressing cancer drugs.

However, only 3 percent of study patients said they had ended up discussing a drug ad with their doctor and ultimately getting a prescription.

The findings should be "reassuring" to cancer specialists who worry about the potential negative effects of consumer drug ads, Dr. Gregory A. Abel and his colleagues report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

In addition, the researchers found that patients typically had a positive attitude toward the ads they had seen. Two-thirds thought the ads presented information in a "balanced manner," and 57 percent said drug advertising helped them in discussing their treatment with their doctor.

On the other hand, Abel's team also found evidence that ads can change the doctor-patient relationship for the worse. Eleven percent of patients said that drug ads had made them "less confident" in their doctor's judgment.

What's more, the researchers write, even if ads only infrequently lead to changes in cancer treatment, those changes could have "serious implications" for individual patients.

They call for future studies that "include a rigorous assessment of the appropriateness of such changes."

SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Oncology, online August 3, 2009.