maintenance herceptin

[Mickey]

Any one notice or are aware of a difference in recurrance between weekly or tri weekly herceptin. My onc does not think there is a difference in recurrance so for convenience has put me on tri weekly.
Mickey

[Sandy H.]

My oncologist rather have his patients on weekly he says he feels its easier on the body as a single dose instead of double or triple. He sees no difference in its benefit. He said if travel is an issue he will do what works best for the patient. I get it weekly. hugs, Sandy

[Lolly]

I was NED on weekly Herceptin for 8 months, the went to 3 weekly for 2 years before recurrence. Now I'm back on weekly, and will stay with that for now as my onc does not want to "rock the boat". He feels weekly and 3 weekly are as effective, but each patient responds in their own unique way to changes in therapy so it depends on the circumstances. Since I'm in the vaccine program, we want to get all the vaccines administered and then wait awhile to see what happens before we change anything.

<3,
Lolly

[StephN]

To my mind there are no good tracked stats on this question. I even asked the researchers from Genentech about something like this at San Antonio last Dec. It was a question that caused a lot of discussion, because the answer from them was that they are so busy working on NEW drugs that there is no one organizing a survey like this. So, the med oncs just basically do what is most convenient for the patients.

My med onc told me that the drug will break down in my body just the same whether I get it each week or 3 weeks. And that there is some left and still working over and beyond those dosages, as there is a set "half-life" to these molecules.

When on the chemo plus Herceptin for my liver mets, it was all given weekly. Right after that I went to 3-week schedule and been on that for 3 years with only recurrance in my brain, which Herceptin does not reach anyway. I feel that getting that break from going to the cancer center so often helped me to feel more "normalized" after all the months of weekly, and sometimes more often, visits. I need to get some of that time back for other things in my life that had to sit and wait.