A MOTHER-OF-THREE has backed a campaign to get a pioneering eye cancer treatment funded by the NHS.

Patricia Morris, from Blackburn, has been kept alive for the past two years through an experimental treatment called chemosaturation, and wants to see other patients with ocular melanoma benefit from it.

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Last week, charity OcuMel UK joined forces with cricketer Kevin Pietersen, whose best friend died from the condition, in a bid to pressure national policy-makers to fund the treatment, which is also known as percutaneous hepatic perfusion (PHP).

Patricia, 56, was the seventh person in the UK to receive the treatment, but said she was one of the “lucky ones” to benefit from a clinical trial at Southampton University Hospital.

The Langham Road resident was diagnosed in 2010, before the cancer spread to her liver.

Chemosaturation isolates the liver from the patient’s circulatory system and allows for the targeted administration of very high doses of chemotherapy, which shrinks the cancer.

She underwent a further follow-up procedure in January 2014, which was also successful, and a third procedure in March 2015, for which she is currently awaiting the results.

An application for funding for the procedure was made via NHS England’s Commissioning Through Evaluation programme in November 2013, but guidance issued last year by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence said the “current evidence” for the treatment was “limited in quality and quantity”. It said the procedure should only be performed for research.

However, Dr Brian Stedman, consultant interventional oncologist at University Hospital Southampton, said: “Data has shown patients who receive chemosaturation survive significantly longer than those who have had other treatments.”