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Dr. Michael Wong from the University of Southern California, Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center considers the correlation between patients’ responses to treatment and the eventuality of stopping treatment. Dr. Wong argues disease and treatment differ from patient to patient. Tune in to learn more.
Transcript
Donna:
I’m Donna Esposito. I’m stage IV metastatic melanoma lung and liver. And my question is if the lesions begin to shrink or no longer appear or disappear, is there any point that you will take us off medicine? Or will we be on medicine for the rest of our lives?
Dr. Wong:
Can I speak in generalities? Because I think it varies for people. First of all, it depends on what and how we got there and whether we see anything on the scan and the shape of the patient—and whether we feel that, if it’s immunotherapy, whether there’s going to be some other pre-existing condition to make that wax and wane. The real answer is that we try to extrapolate from clinical trial information, which is the most solid piece of information, that’s not forthcoming because that’s not how the trials were built.
We’re never going to get there. I’m cognizant of the fact that somewhere in the spectrum of care for that patient, once you’re talking with prognoses that are going to measure in years, do you really need that to happen in that situation? So again, what I tell my patients is that once we get out to the 18-month mark with you, you and I will have a conversation about what to do. But it could be a variation of schedule. It could be a variation of dose, depending on what we’re doing. But it’s a hopeful situation. As well, we have increasingly more information about whether or not that’s a good strategy.
But more importantly, whether we can recapture the disease should it come back after we take people off therapy because that information continues to accumulate and build and changes all the time. So that’s the best answer I can give you now. It’s a very, very individualized decision.
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Published By :
Patient Power
Date :
Oct 16, 2015
