Sividon Diagnostics GmbH
Swiss Healthcare System to Reimburse Costs of EndoPredict from January 01st, 2015 on – Less Chemotherapy thanks to Gene Expression Test
Not all breast cancer patients do need chemotherapy; that is a known fact. Up to now, however, in many cases it could not be said with certainty whether the stressful therapy is necessary or not. For these patients, the EndoPredict gene expression test was developed. From January 01st 2015 on, the analysis will be refunded by the Swiss Compulsory Health Insurance. This was enacted by the Swiss Confederate Department of Home Affairs.
In Switzerland, the Lucerne Cantonal Hospital has been performing the EndoPredict test already since 2012. “The test result can be available within one day, supporting treatment decisions immediately,” explains Prof. Dr. Joachim Diebold, Medical Director of the Institute of Pathology at the Lucerne Cantonal Hospital. The test is expediently used in patients where the conventional diagnostic findings do not support an unambiguous decision about chemotherapy. Therefore, it is important to know how aggressive a tumour is. Very aggressive tumours are treated with chemotherapy. For less aggressive tumours, exclusively anti-hormonal therapy is sufficient as such patients have an excellent prognosis even without chemotherapy. At the Lucerne facility, it could be shown in clinical practice that by use of the EndoPredict a part of the patients can be spared chemotherapy, since in many cases a low risk of disease progression can be determined only by the test. “At the end of the day, the sole object is to enable each patient to get her individually appropriate therapy. We are pleased that new developments in pathology help to achieve this goal,” says Professor Diebold. The analysis requires performance by a pathology specialist with a focus on molecular pathology. Apart from the Lucerne Cantonal Hospital, the pathology department of the Kantonsspital Baden and the Istituto cantonale di patologia di Locarno currently offer the EndoPredict test. Other hospitals can send tumour samples for analysis to these locations. Sividon Diagnostics GmbH was founded in July 2010 as a management buyout from Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics Products in Cologne, Germany. The company aims to sustainably increase the quality of therapy-accompanying diagnostics in oncology. EndoPredict(R), the first diagnostic test from Sividon, has been available since 2011. The breast cancer prognostic test helps in deciding for which patient a chemotherapy is indicated End of Media Release Issuer: Sividon Diagnostics GmbH Key word(s): Health 15.12.2014 Dissemination of a Press Release, transmitted by DGAP – a service of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Media archive at www.dgap-medientreff.de and www.dgap.de |
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