Taiwan needs to revamp research into stomach cancer and increase National Health Insurance (NHI) coverage for targeted therapy to fight the disease, medical experts said yesterday.
Although the government plans to expand NHI coverage to Helicobacter pylori screening, the measure alone would not be enough, National Cheng Kung University Hospital superintendent Shan Yan-shen (沈延盛) told a news conference in Taipei.
The nation on average reported 4,000 new cases of stomach cancer annually, with the tumor progressing to a late or terminal stage for 35 percent of the patients, he said at the event hosted by the Gastroenterological Society of Taiwan.
Photo: Chiu Chih-jou, Taipei Times
Citing a global study by the Concord Cancer Center dated 2018, he said that Taiwanese gastric cancer patients’ survival rates in the past three decades improved by three points to 38 percent, lagging far behind Japan and South Korea.
The main reason for the nation’s failure to make significant progress was inadequate screening and limited choice of drugs, he said.
Starting this year, the Ministry of Health and Welfare is subsidizing checkups to screen people between 50 years and 74 years old for the bacterium in 17 jurisdictions to facilitate prevention and early treatment, he said.
As the bacterium is not present in more than 50 percent of Taiwanese patients, the measure would have a limited effect, Shen said, adding that doctors need to discover the factor driving the cancer and devise a new screening strategy.
At-risk groups should be encouraged to take gastroscopy exams, he said.
Members of the public must know having trouble swallowing and discomforts in the lower sternum, bloating after eating normal portions and pain from having an empty stomach are signs of stomach cancer, he said.
NHI covered only 6 percent of targeted treatments for patients with HER2-positive gastric cancer, said Chen Jen-hsi (陳仁熙), a doctor at the Taipei branch of Chang Gung Memorial Hospital.
Meanwhile, patients with HER2-negative gastric cancer — which accounts for the overwhelming majority of cases — still have limited options for insurance-covered treatments, especially Stage IV drugs, he said.
Authorizing more types of targeted therapy for NHI would save lives, as such procedures have reduced stomach cancer fatality by 25 percent, he said.
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