ER alpha-status of disseminated tumor cells in bone marrow of primary bc patients
 

http://breast-cancer-research.com/co...df/bcr2143.pdf

Hopeful

all the more reason to get serial bone marrow samplings
 

before during and after treatment to determine the effect/if any on the disseminated tumor cells (which appear to be the source of recurrence)

Is that a typical diagnostic/tracking procedure?

Update
 

Here is a recent editorial on the article posted in this thread: http://breast-cancer-research.com/co...df/bcr2148.pdf

Hopeful

Better ways of making decisions
 

Thanks for the recent update, Hopeful. When I asked my onc about this clear back in 2002 he seemed to think it had genuine potential even back then.

A trade-off for substituting BM sampling in place of the large amounts of rads one gets from all the CTs, mammograms, BSGI, etc. over time that are CUMULATIVE is that BM sampling is a painful and invasive procedure. But it would be of significant advantage, as once tested and found to have none, a stage I could consider hormonal therapy or trastuzumab alone more deeply. After all, as the article indicates,

"We know that only a minority of approximately 10% to 20% of patients do really benefit from systemic therapy"

Systemic therapy may make us tend to "feel" like we have protection, but 80% to 90% of us are getting no advantage from doing systemic therapy.

AlaskaAngel

Angel,

The phrase that stuck with me was,

" . . . the massive overtreatment of the majority of breast cancer patients is currently well accepted in the scientific community."

IMO, it should NOT be "well accepted" in the bc survivor community. There is no excuse for "throwing the book" at something blindly, if only one page will work. If this is the test that tells you what footnote in that tome will benefit you, let's get the test as SOP. I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't trade one painful procedure for even a short course of chemo if the procedure demonstrated the chemo was not necessary.

Hopeful