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We all kind of brought up different questions and I'd like to clarify any confusion.
Janet's original question was:
Hello
Just a quick question. As fas as everyone knows - do all woman who are HER2 relapse so it becomes a question of when not if. Janet M
That is a different question from Sassy's question, which was:
"My opinion....because 90% or so of Her2+ BC patients are Er/Pr negative,"
This statement surprises me, because I asked my onc yesterday specifically about the statistics of hormonal status of her2+. He stated that about 50% of her2+ were er+.
Does anyone have any additional information concerning this statistic?"
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I think we end up being confused about numbers partly because we are thinking about three different characteristics, two of which have always been emphasized(HER2 status and ER status) and one that has not (PR status). But the whole discussion started out originally based on the new article that was posted discussing the importance of PR status.
Please see my post under "ER, PR Status with HER2+" topic for some rough statistics I found that may be helpful.
Also,
Janet, your question is interesting to me. I am told that most HER2's recur within 3 years if they are going to recur. But because it has not really been standard until this year to test everyone with bc in the U.S. for HER2 status, and because it was discovered that around 1/5 or 1/6 of the testing that was done in the past wasn't accurate, it seems to me that no one can be very accurate about answering that question. Would there really be much reliable long-term data? Also, until relatively recently it was commonly assumed that chemotherapy didn't affect survival, just limited the onset or frequency of recurrence. (That was before aromatase inhibitors were widely prescribed, before dose dense, before it was decided that Adriamycin was more effective, etc.) So maybe for those treated earlier and who have not benefitted from these additional types of treatment, maybe the answer to your question would be more likely to be yes.
This is why I do not understand the current basis for generally denying Herceptin to all of those who are "more than a year out from treatment", because most of them would fall into the group who never received dose dense or Adriamycin; and if the chemo they got only limits onset of recurrence and frequency of recurrence then logically they would end up dealing with more cancer farther down the road than "a year out from treatment". So my question is, why are they leaving so many women from previous years out? Are they "ASSuming" these women don't matter while science romps forward to deal with the newly diagnosed?
AlaskaAngel
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