RE: Clinical Company30 Jan 2025 07:47
Quick question for LTH here, does anyone know if the patient will require health insurance to approve the therapy or are HEMO covering all costs? I found this timeline in MD Anderson’s page, so without health insurance delay we are looking at first infusion here in the next two weeks I’d say based on that timeline given first patient was been assessed by 8th Jan
The entire CAR T cell therapy process takes about three months to complete, from the time your doctor orders an eligibility assessment until you finish the 30-day observation period after the infusion. Here’s how long each step lasts.
Determining eligibility: 5-7 days, depending on the number of tests, scans and consultations ordered by your doctor.
Obtaining insurance approval: 10 to 14 days, on average, but sometimes as long as 4 weeks. (Patients may either rest at home during this period or have additional treatments, such as bridging chemotherapy, to keep their disease under control.)
Extracting the T cells (apheresis): 2 days. Patients must come to the hospital on both days and expect to stay for several hours. The first day is for placing the apheresis catheter to extract the cells. The second day is for collecting the cells.
Enhancing the T cells: 3 weeks. That’s generally how long it takes for T cells to be sent to the lab, altered and returned to MD Anderson.
Lympho-depletion chemotherapy: 5 days. This step helps deplete your natural immune system to allow the CAR T cells to expand and proliferate after they are infused.
Infusing the CAR T cells: This usually takes no more than an hour, though it could be as quick as 15 minutes. It depends on how many bags of cells are being infused, and if you have a reaction.
Recovering from the infusion: 30 days