RUH Bath offers quicker cancer treatment with new immunotherapy jab
Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust is among the first to offer a new five-minute injection, reducing patient time in hospital.
By Verity Coombes
••2 min read
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Generic image of a medical injection vial and syringe.
Patients at the Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust are now benefiting from a new immunotherapy jab that drastically cuts treatment time, offering a quicker and more convenient option compared to traditional infusions.
The new injectable form of pembrolizumab, a type of immunotherapy, can be administered in approximately five minutes. This is a significant improvement from the previous infusion method, which took at least 30 minutes, allowing many patients to spend less time in hospital.
The switch to injections is also enabling the RUH's Medlock Unit to treat more patients. Both patients and nursing staff have expressed a preference for the jab over infusions, with patients also reporting fewer side effects.
This new treatment can be used for 14 different types of cancer, including lung, breast, head and neck, and cervical cancers. It functions by stimulating the patient's immune cells to identify and eliminate cancer cells. While the injection is being rolled out nationally, the RUH is among the pioneering hospitals to offer this to its patients.
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"It's great that we're now able to offer many of our cancer patients this option for treatment. The feedback we've had from patients has been overwhelmingly positive. People really appreciate how quickly the injection can be given compared with an infusion and that they now spend less time in hospital overall. Patients have told us they feel less stressed by the experience and how it's freed up more of their time for important day to day activities, like getting back to work and parents being able to make the school run."
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"This really is fantastic news for so many of our cancer patients and I'm delighted that the RUH is one of the first hospitals to be offering this treatment, it reflects our commitment to consistently delivering the highest quality care for the people we care for."
Pembrolizumab operates by inhibiting a protein known as PD-1, which typically restrains immune responses. By blocking PD-1, the immune system is released to detect and combat cancer cells. Further information about pembrolizumab and its administration is available on the Macmillan Cancer website.
