Just curious if anyone has any insight into the splitting of rounds of Folfox one should receive as part of treatment for rectal cancer.
While the standard of care is chemo-rad, surgery, chemo, my mom’s oncs in Iowa City and Mayo are taking a neoadjuvant chemo approach with her treatment, starting her off with 8 rounds of Folfox.
Originally, we assumed 8 would be sufficient because the long-course radiation includes chemo that from my understanding is basically equivalent to the remaining 4 rounds in a sense.
However, Mayo said she is a candidate for short course radiation that does not include chemo since it’s only a 5 day deal. It was mentioned that 4 rounds of Folfox would likely follow as a result after surgery.
I am curious if there is any data on if it matters if these 12 rounds are not done concurrently. I have seen a few of the signatures of folks here who did short course radiation and they seem to have had 4 neoadjuvant rounds followed by 8 adjuvant rounds, so obviously other people have had their rounds split up, although the quantity of the split is reversed.
Side note—I don’t know whether to feel good or bad about the fact that there are so many variations of care for rectal cancer. It’s like in a way you are happy it can be customized to your situation but in another way you feel immense pressure to pick the best path to NED.