Wait for symptoms before scanning & treating?

[jessica]

Hi All~
I'm so curious about your response to this thread (started 11/19 by Rhonda H titled "Musa Mayer....") & haven't heard back from any Stage IV'ers. I cut&pasted a bit of it & started this NEW thread. Hope you don't mind.

The following is a select portion from an interview w/Musa Mayer(a Stage II BC survivor & advocate)on Web MD.
What are your thoughts on the following comments?

"… early detection of metastatic disease through testing before you have symptoms doesn't offer an advantage for you. This means that you don't have to drive yourself crazy with repeated tests every time you see your oncologist. It means that your body will let you know if there is a problem..."

"There is very good research that shows that patients who have follow-up testing done, by which I mean bone scans, CT scans, MRI's, tumor markers, etc., in the ABSENCE of symptoms do not do any better or live longer than patients who do not have any of these follow-up tests done.
So what I am saying is that in terms of making sure you don't have a recurrence, it is not dangerous or harmful to wait until you have a symptom. You don't need to be tested periodically to make sure that you are cancer free.
Catching a metastatic recurrence before you have symptoms, versus catching it a month or two or three months later when it's causing symptoms, makes no difference in the course of the disease or in survival. When I found this out and read the research that demonstrated this shocking fact, I was stunned.”

To read the entire transcript from this interview Rhonda's set up the link on the original thread from 11/19.

Keep the Faith!