Mattie wrote:Hi all,
I've been on maintenance Avastin for awhile. Is anyone else doing it? It seems to control my disease, but wondering if anyone stopped and what the outcome was?
The other very important point, that is very important to remind our colleagues, is that bevacizumab on its own should not be used for maintenance. It does not work. It does not help. If you want to maintain patients, it’s a fluoropyrimidine plus bevacizumab. Do not use the monoclonal antibody on its own.
betsydoglover wrote:I really do not want to sound like an Avastin advocate - no axe to grind - other than my survival. Obviously there are no truths to be found in individual experiences - but this board is pretty much about individual experiences.
Pyro70 referenced an interesting trial comparing Avastin only to monitoring. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/29346040/ That trial involved patients who still had "tumor burden". Fine trial, but it is not necessarily the case that the results would be the same in NED patients. So different kinds of "maintenance" - that for folks who still show evidence of disease and that for those who do not.
Do NED patients need followup chemo? Who knows? I had none after my initial treatment. When 3 years later, we decided to do it following lung surgery, it just seemed prudent, especially given the relative lack of side effects.
Who knows if Avastin only helped stave off any recurrence for me or others who have done that? Doubt there is any way to determine the efficacy in the NED patients overall- you'd have to find a lot of subjects (many of whom may have gone on with their lives) and then follow them for a long period of time. This kind of study would likely not have a short "time to disease progression" - thus needing much longer study term. Just saying that there is lots to discuss with our oncologists depending on our specific stage 4 situations, and, especially in the NED case, there don't seem to be any absolutes.
Again, my 2 cents,
These negative results reinforce that bevacizumab should not be used in the adjuvant treatment of patients with stage III CRC. A
rp1954 wrote: She wants a better offer, a means off the ledge taking fewer risks - a protocol, a treatment or even an analytical improvement, rather than that simple leap of faith based on some crude statistics with a lot of people not enough like her.
Pyro70 wrote:rp1954 wrote: She wants a better offer, a means off the ledge taking fewer risks - a protocol, a treatment or even an analytical improvement, rather than that simple leap of faith based on some crude statistics with a lot of people not enough like her.
This speaks volumes.
You suggest following evidence based medicine is too big of a “leap of faith” because...
...the data isn’t “perfect”, but instead you suggest some other (undefined/unknown) protocol without ANY evidence of efficacy.
I don’t have more to say [to, for or about?] you, people can be their own judge, adieu...
Milk Tea wrote:Hi Mattie,
My husband is on Xeloda plus Avanstin maintenance for about two years. We are also so scared for the recurrence if quit or drop one of them.
Can you share why you dropped Xeloda? And how often you get Avanstin infusion currently? My husband gets Avanstin every 3 weeks now but his oncologist thinks he can move to every 4 weeks so we only need to go to infusion center once a month.
Return to “Colon Talk - Colon cancer (colorectal cancer) support forum”
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 118 guests