Checkups will soon be a thing of the past for Valerie DeBaie.
“I finished in March of last year, my last injection, and February third will be my last checkup,” she says. “So I’ll be finished in the trial.”
The trial was for Rituxan SC, a newly approved formulation of Rituxan, the current standard treatment for patients with non-hodgkin’s lymphoma. The SC version is delivered by injection in the belly.
“It can be administered in approximately five minutes versus the intervenes infusion that can take a minimum of an hour and a half,” says Trisha Hudson, a registered nurse and hematology research coordinator with the Nova Scotia Health Authority.
Hudson says outcomes of the clinical trial have been positive.
“It showed that it was just as efficacious and the safety of it was comparable to intervenes Rituxan.”
For patients like DeBaie, who is now in remission, less time spent in the clinic is one of the major advantages.
“It was wonderful. It was very important because you could continue on with your life,” she tells CTV News. “You’re not in the clinic having all of that time taken up. You could go home or go back to your job and continue on.”
“It’s important because it’s a few years of their life and they need to have normal things in their life and visit their family,” adds Hudson.
Hudson says now that Rituxan SC has been approved by Health Canada, she expects it will become the new standard of care.
