Video of Ashish M Kamat, MD, MBBS, about the impact of the BCG shortage

Impact of the BCG Shortage

Ashish M. Kamat, MD, MBBS, Endowed Professor of Urologic Oncology (Surgery) and Cancer Research at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center discusses the history and impact of the BCG shortage in the US and life-altering impact on patients.

Transcript: The BCG shortage has been going on for quite some time, and over the years we have had the fortune, or I guess the misfortune in many ways to find the impact of the BCG shortage on patients. That in areas that had ongoing BCG shortages, the incidents of radical cystectomies went up almost 300%, which means that patients who did not have access to BCG to treat their high-risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer were undergoing radical cystectomy, which is a life altering surgery, 300 times more often than regions that had BCG available. And of course, that’s literally what’s happening in the United States. There are regions where patients don’t have access to BCG. They have to try other therapies which are not as good as BCG. And because of that, we’re seeing an increase in recurrences of these high-risk tumors in these patients.