HER2 Support Group Forums - View Single Post - HERA and FinHER studies results to be updated at next week's St Gallen conference

Christine MH-UK · 03-14-2009, 02:13 PM

http://www.docguide.com/news/content...2575780065EE72

This is pretty raw stuff, pretty much a straight abstract, but I will see if I can make it a bit simpler. I hope Lani will correct anything that I have gotten wrong.

The interesting findings:
* Taxotere was clearly better than vinorelbine for early BC.
* The reduction in overall mortality in the group that got herceptin and taxotere was 58% in the Finher protocol.
* There seems to have a been a big and significant reduction in distant mets when herceptin was used with taxotere. The abstract is written in such a confusing manner that I struggled with it, but I think the risk of distant mets was reduced by about half. There was a significant improvement in distant disease free survival.
* The herceptin-treated group did not have more heart problems than the control group.

Questions left unanswered:
* There was no confidence interval provided for the hazard reduction in the abstract, so it is impossible to know what the margin of error on the recurrence reduction is to compare it to other trials. This is a particularly important omission given the relatively small size of the trial.
* Why they used distant disease free survival instead of the more usual disease free survival.
* There were no confidence intervals or p values given for the overall improvement in survival, which probably means that this trial has not yet demonstrated that herceptin significantly improves mortality, but updated figures on this are also missing from four year HERA results as well. Maybe it is all those her2-positive women with secondaries living a long time on herceptin complicating things!

I guess we will have to wait until it is published for more answers.

03-14-2009, 02:13 PM	#10
Christine MH-UK Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 414	FinHer reports out five year followup http://www.docguide.com/news/content...2575780065EE72 This is pretty raw stuff, pretty much a straight abstract, but I will see if I can make it a bit simpler. I hope Lani will correct anything that I have gotten wrong. The interesting findings: * Taxotere was clearly better than vinorelbine for early BC. * The reduction in overall mortality in the group that got herceptin and taxotere was 58% in the Finher protocol. * There seems to have a been a big and significant reduction in distant mets when herceptin was used with taxotere. The abstract is written in such a confusing manner that I struggled with it, but I think the risk of distant mets was reduced by about half. There was a significant improvement in distant disease free survival. * The herceptin-treated group did not have more heart problems than the control group. Questions left unanswered: * There was no confidence interval provided for the hazard reduction in the abstract, so it is impossible to know what the margin of error on the recurrence reduction is to compare it to other trials. This is a particularly important omission given the relatively small size of the trial. * Why they used distant disease free survival instead of the more usual disease free survival. * There were no confidence intervals or p values given for the overall improvement in survival, which probably means that this trial has not yet demonstrated that herceptin significantly improves mortality, but updated figures on this are also missing from four year HERA results as well. Maybe it is all those her2-positive women with secondaries living a long time on herceptin complicating things! I guess we will have to wait until it is published for more answers.