Laurence Robertson – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Laurence Robertson on 2015-10-22.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he has taken to make bisphosphonates routinely available on the NHS to prevent the spread of breast cancer to bones.

George Freeman

Where there is a clinical need to do so for a patient, clinicians are legally able to prescribe bisphosphonates for breast cancer prevention.

NHS England’s Breast Cancer Clinical Reference Group (CRG) has included the use of bisphosphonates in their draft service guidance for breast cancer. The CRG has highlighted bisphosphonates as a key issue for potential improvement in survival outcomes.

NHS England expects the draft service guidance to be finalised and available for dissemination in the autumn of 2015. It will then be up to clinical commissioning groups to consider how they adopt this in to their local commissioning activities.