OK, all the posts lately on her2s and recurrance made me spend about 2 hours on the internet last night. This is a Finish study from several years ago that studied women who were 30 years out from dx, and whether her2 was a predictor of more poor prognosis. No surprise, it was. But then again, almost all the literature support that. Here is what I think is neat - the 25 year survival rate was 31% for those that are her2+, and 39% for those that are her2-. That is considered statistically significantly worse, but only because of the basis of the numbers (31% is not 8% worse than 39%, but on a relative basis, it is 25% worse.) If I read this correctly, with those with negative nodes, it didn't matter if they were her2+ or not.
I know the her2 tests are a little different now, but here is the great news!! These stats were with these women receiving NO CHEMOTHERAPY, let alone HERCEPTIN! Back then, I think they cut it out and did radiation - no systemmatic treatment to get what is in your blood that can come back to an organ. So overall long-term her2 stats have to be much more positive than that today. I don't know about you, but even though the stats here were grim, this article gave me a lot of hope.....
http://www.jco.org/cgi/content/abstract/10/7/1044
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