For COPD patients the PBS is to remove the clinical criteria restricting access to patients with a FEV1 <50% of predicted for triple therapy Trelegy (fluticasone furoate with umeclidinium and vilanterol) from 1 March 2020.
The move is expected to allow more than 16,000 patients per year to access triple therapy. It follows a recommendation from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC) in March 2019, which concluded that triple therapy provided a significant improvement in efficacy over dual therapy (LAMA/LABA) for some patients with COPD.
The PBAC said the removal of the FEV1 threshold from the clinical criteria would be consistent with recent amendments to the GOLD guidelines, and “reflect current evidence indicating that FEV1 lacks precision to be used clinically as a predictor of exacerbations or mortality in patients with COPD.”
It also noted that history of previous exacerbations is regarded as the best predictor of future COPD episodes.
And in other PBS changes, more patients with lung cancer will gain access to immunotherapy from 1 March 2020 via listings for durvalumab and atezolizumab
Durvalumab (Imfinzi, AstraZeneca) will be listed for the first time for treatment of patients with unresectable Stage III non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose disease has not progressed following platinum-based chemoradiation therapy.