Dr. Patrick Thornton

Dr. Patrick Thornton is a Consultant Haematologist, Senior Lecturer RCSI, and Clinical Director Hermitage Medical Clinic Laboratory.

“I was delighted to be asked to speak at the inaugural CLL Ireland patients group.

It is perhaps surprising that the commonest leukaemia in Ireland has not already a long established patients group but perhaps we had little to say or talk about.

Fortunately for CLL patients this no longer the case.

There has been an explosion in the knowledge of CLL biology accompanied with tremendous breakthroughs in treatment of high risk disease and relapsed and refractory disease. We have also seen treatments open to more and more patients who are less fit and of an older age and with a move away from traditional chemotherapies to more targeted treatments which can be given in tablet form and taken at home.

This past 12 months has seen the HSE and National Cancer control programme reimbursement of state of the art therapies like Ibrutinib and Idelalisib so all patients who need these lifesaving therapies can avail of it.

Ireland is punching well above its global weight in recruitment to the most advanced clinical trials and later this year I am pleased to say for the first time Ireland will be involved in CLL13 a state of the art trial lead by the German CLL study group. Forums such as this enhance the dissemination of knowledge of new treatments which is a tremendous advantage to all of us to maintain this standard.

I commend the organising committee for their tremendous efforts in setting up this high quality forum and wish them well for the future”. April 2017

For more information about Dr. Thornton’s background and work – please click here for his LinkedIn profile.