The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the national organisation responsible for providing national guidance on promoting good health and preventing and treating ill health, is currently developing clinical guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of both early breast cancer and advanced or metastatic breast cancer. These guidelines will help to shape how breast cancer care is delivered in the next few years and which treatments and care are available.
A draft of the guidelines was recently published and NICE is keen for people affected by breast cancer, or interested in breast cancer issues, to feed in their thoughts about the proposed draft. This is your chance to share your views on services and treatments and help inform a joint response from Breast Cancer Care and Breakthrough Breast Cancer. The charities are working together to develop a response to the guidelines, to help us make sure that our response represents the views and experiences of as many people as possible. The Advanced breast cancer guidelines are particularly important to the work of the Secondary Breast Cancer Taskforce and as members of the Reference Panel we would really like to hear your views on this guidance.
To inform our response, we would like you to complete a questionnaire on the topics outlined in the guidelines. The survey can be completed online at; http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=5zNiZVqyJ95wSnzllJDy3g_3d_3d.
If you would like to read the draft guidance they can be found here: http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/index.jsp?action=download&o=41615
The deadline for feedback is Friday 12th September 2008. Please return hard copies of the survey to Chris Quince, Policy and Campaigns Assistant, Breast Cancer Care, 5-13 Great Suffolk Street, London, SE1 0NS.
Please note that all responses will be shared with staff from both charities as part of our joint work on the consultation. However, all responses will remain anonymous.
