It is not only the empty vials that go into the garbage can during chemotherapy drugs preparation: a cost analysis of unused chemotherapy drugs in cancer treatment.

PURPOSE: Cancer therapy is a costly treatment. Costs of drugs used in cancer therapy are gradually increasing with the addition of new and expensive drugs. This fact imposes obligation on reasonable drug usage. Occasionally, all of the prescribed drugs are not used for various reasons, and a number of drugs can be left over. In this study, we aimed to calculate the costs of unused chemotherapeutic drugs in our oncology clinics. METHODS: A total of 117 patients with 17 different types of cancer were administered 32 cancer therapy protocols during 2 months. After administration of ideal doses of the prescribed drugs calculated on an individual basis, the number of unused drug doses in the packages was recorded and the costs of the unused drugs were calculated based on current prices of the drugs. RESULTS: The cumulative cost of the unused drugs calculated for all patients was US dollars (USD) 6406.93, and average cost of the drug per capita was USD 54.76. Minimal and maximal unused drug costs per drug were USD 0.29 for 5-fluorouracil, and USD 247.12 for bevacizumab, respectively. Minimal increase in drug costs per recipe was USD 0.50 for a prescription containing cyclophosphamide and 5-fluorouracil, while the total cost of bevacizumab plus irinotecan combination increased tremendously to USD 309.12. Among chemotherapeutic protocols the cheapest one was AC (adriamycin, cyclophosphamide) with USD 4.77, while the most expensive one (USD 116.02) was FOLFIRI-B (5-fluorouracil, calcium folinate, irinotecan, and bevacizumab). CONCLUSION: The important financial burden of unused drugs goes unrecognized among routine chemotherapeutic applications. In order to be able to avoid this extravagance, drug industry, prescribing physicians, and practice nurses must assume important roles.

Electrical characterization of composition modulated In(1-x)Sb(x) nanowire field effect transistors by scanning gate microscopy.

In this work high quality crystalline In(1_x)Sb(x) nanowires (NWs) are synthesized via a template-based electrochemistry method. Energy dispersive spectroscopy studies show that composition modulated In(1-x)Sb(x) (x approximately 0.5 or 0.7) nanowires can be attained by selectively controlling the deposition potential during growth. Single In(1-x)Sb(x) nanowire field effect transistors (NW-FETs) are fabricated to study the electrical properties of as-grown NWs. Using scanning gate microscopy (SGM) as a local gate the I(ds)-V(ds) characteristics of the fabricated devices are modulated as a function of the applied gate voltage. Electrical transport measurements show n-type semiconducting behavior for the In0.5Sb0.5 NW-FET, while a p-type behavior is observed for the In0.3Sb0.7 NW-FET device. The ability to grow composition modulated In(1-x)Sb(x) NWs can provide new opportunities for utilizing InSb NWs as building blocks for low-power and high speed nanoscale electronics.