Weekly Taxol and Herceptin vs. Dose Dense Taxol and Herceptin

[MDW]

Thank you very much for sharing your experiences, Bev and Marejo.

[Becky]

I believe that the weekly Taxol/Herceptin is a better regime (its like spraying a weed with Round Up every week versus every other week). However, I believe the oncologist was totally wrong on dense dosing. The Sloan trial on using dense dose AC followed by 12 taxol/Herceptin did NOT show increased cardio toxicity. I saw this poster myself one year ago at ASCO when I attended with this group. Maryanne - our member who is not on the board much right now due to her daughter's health, participated in this Sloan study.


Dense dosing helps hormone negative and Her2+ women the most and ER+ women the least (but NOT if you are also Her2+).

I consulted with 4 oncologists before and all of them did not encourage me to try the Herceptin trial (even though I did end up with getting Herceptin due to good timing). This was because they felt that dense dosing (being brand new for 9 months at that time) gave a KNOWN 38% benefit whereas the Herceptin trial was not completed yet. One oncologist outright told me that if I were his wife, he would do the dense dosing.

However, AC is done and the 12 weeklies are probably better overall as it is better with Abraxane (the same active solubilized a different way)

[mts]

Hi-


I was given DD AC+T +H and I am ER+ 10% and PR-. I was also Stage I. 41 yrs old at time of Dx.
I consulted with 4 onc's.
Because Herceptin at that time (2004) was not provided to Stage I's, I believe the oncs felt that DD was better. Now a days, with Herceptin, onc's may feel that DD is not as necessary ???

I still feel that DD was good for me and that even if Herceptin were readily available then as it is today, I would still have done the DD.

Everyone is different- I tolerated DD quite well. Of course there were days where I could not get out of bed, but thankfully I got through it. I know that many onc's look at the age of the patient, family setting and add many "opinion" factors into the mix in order to come up with the best treatment plan. For example- the treatment for a 60 yr old woman vs a 40 yr old. Not that any group is allowed to feel that they have more to live for than any other... but I think that onc's take age of children, overall health etc in the mix. I would think that 48 is pretty young... and that it is up to the patient to pick and choose whatever tx she wants and that the onc is there to provide good science.

Keep in mind that AC+T every three weeks ain't "chemo light" either... the one thing you don't want to do is hunt around for someone else to give you an opinion on which you have already decided upon... tic toc.

Either way, you still have to sign a release form !!!

Best of luck to your sister-- keep us posted on her decision.

MTS