Her2 Recurrence Rates pre-Herceptin

[Hopeful]

http://www.abstracts2view.com/sabcs/view.php?nu=SABCS07L_287

Hopeful

[Christine MH-UK]

Very interesting. I wonder how this will affect the TEACH trial, since that involves giving tykerb to patients who are five years out from diagnosis. If these figures are right, the prospect of these people having a recurrence would seem to be extremely slim.

[Hopeful]

I was frankly amazed by the steep peak in the first two years, with the big drop off after. Makes the 2 year benchmark much more significant to me.

Hopeful

[Christine MH-UK]

When my oncology nurse said that cancers as aggressive always came back with in three years after treatment, I felt really lousy. She said that based on her experience, not any studies, but it looks like she was right.

It was a tough period to live through, though. I just tried to keep busy, since after you have done a few of the basic things (get 5 fruit and veg/day, five hours of walking a week and cutting back on the omega 6s in favour of omega 3s and 9s) you probably have done what you can do. Make sure that you do some of the things that you have always wanted to do, just in case. And keep in mind that even before herceptin about 75% of those women lived a decade following diagnosis.

Take care,

Christine

[Barbara2]

I'm wondering if most of these pre-herceptin patients received AC+T as standard treatment.

[Lien]

It sounds very hopeful to me. At the two year mark, my rads onc came up to me and shook my hand, saying: Congratulations! 2 years with no recurrence is a very good sign. Go out and celebrate tonight.

His gut feeling seems to have been right; I'm almost 4 years out now. No chemo, no herceptin. But I take Zoladex shots and Arimidex. Here in Europe we try to avoid Chemo if we can.

Jacqueline

[AlaskaAngel]

Christine MH-UK,

Your comment regarding the TEACH trial was actually part of my rationale for not going forward as part of that trial once I qualified for it, although I didn't mention it in the comments about clinical trials on the other forum a while back. Right or wrong... ethically I felt that by taking a spot in that trial as a stage I, I could end up displacing someone with a history somewhat more likely to recur; and it also was my belief that for that trial to carry as much weight and be as meaningful as possible it should be taking those at the most risk. I may end up recurring but I like the looks of the info presented here pretty well...!

AlaskaAngel

[Barbara H.]

I was diagnosed in 1998 and didn't recur until 2004. I was given AC + T and radiation. I asked for Herceptin, but was unable to get it back then. After the breast cancer metastasized to the brain, liver, skin, and lungs, with numerous nodes also involved, a few treatments of Herceptin along with brain surgery brought me to NED. Unfortunately, a year and a half later I developed bone mets. I am now on the Herceptin DM1 trial and it seems to be working. I really do wish that I had been able to receive Herceptin in 98. I'm glad it is now available to patients with early HER2 breast cancer.

Thank you to those of you who are posting from the conference.

Barbara H.

[Christine MH-UK]

I was thinking back and I can think of a handful of people I have run across who recurred around 6-7 years. They tended to be 0-1 nodes and er+ and get quite a few years out of herceptin. Probably the best example is the late, great fundraiser Jane Tomlinson who recurred at about 7 years and lived for about 6 years on herceptin, so no death within the first ten years of diagnosis but not true survival.

Still when I was deciding whether to pay to start herceptin, I searched high and low for an er-/pr- person with four or more nodes who had recurred more than four years out from diagnosis. I found noone.

I will post a thread on the main board to see if we can figure out some patterns on who recurs late.

Take care,

Christine

[Andrea Barnett Budin]

VERY INTERESTING. I RECURRED 3 YRS OUT, 2 OUT OF 21 NODES, ER/PR BORDERLINE THAT CHANGED TO ER/PR-. ('95, '98) You can check out my signature...

In Aug '98 met throughout liver. Couldn't qualify to Herceptin clin trial as I had too much Adria in '95. But FDA fast-tracked H 9/28/98. I took 9 mnths of Taxotere and have been on Herceptin since Nov '98 to date. No recurrence.

Andi