[hutchibk]

Just to be extra clear... my onc agrees that TMs don't always offer trustworthy info for every patient. But then much of the time, along with other monitoring methods that create the big picture, they do correlate directly to recurrances. If he were to not use them at all simply because they are not 100% accurate for every patient, then he would be shortchanging the half of his patients for whom they might prove (and have proven) to be a valuable indicator. He is very savvy about TMs. He sees them as an additional tool in the battle, one that has to be used with the utmost of proficiency and experience. He is very adept at deciphering who they are a valuable indicator for. But he would never know were he to not run them and follow them from setting a baseline post initial DX. His approach is to attempt to do everything possible to battle this disease, and finding out if TMs are indicative of activity and a valuable tool for an individual patient falls under "everything possible." For many (like me) they have proven to correlate directly to activity.

Maybe this is a very simplistic cliche', but for me it is basically "there is no way to know if you don't try...". Personally, I believe the stakes are too high to rely on statistics and generalized studies as the basis for my surveillance.