Boys0406 wrote:Has anyone had distant lymph nodes show up on their CT and PET scans that were enlarged and then they turned out to just be inflammation from the tumor and negative for cancer? My DH had some distant nodes show up on his scans that they were unable to biopsy during surgery and now we are waiting to see if they’ll still show up after surgery and chemo. The scan is in a few weeks. If the lymph nodes shrunk, it could mean they were cancer and responded to chemo or they were not cancer and just inflamed. It seems odd that they’d just be inflamed if they were distant, since that means Stage IV. I just want them to biopsy no matter what, so we know for sure.
If you're going to talk distant LN and screen most effectively, you need the radiologist's estimated size (mm), and location(s). Also we favored more information on bloodwork to hit back with, from markers to inflammation and liver panels, on daily immunochemo (regular chemo messes with more panels). Your husband's bloodwork right before surgery, after surgery and before chemo may have more useful data for your husband's metastatic situation, if they took enough data.
There have been some cases of presumed inflamed/infected LN that subsided. Not sure of the time intervals and percent. By and large, people don't go fishing in the LN. The only case I can think of here, had already rapidly snowballing problems that left everyone here traumatized. Perhaps a selective memory.
Anyone know if a lymph node that was no longer enlarged and was cancer prior to chemo would test positive in a biopsy if chemo had shrunk it ?
I don't have a direct answer. One problem that I will note that we had was a discrepancy between all the radiologists' estimate of number (either 1 or 2 LN mets) and size(s), and the actual conglomerated LN cluster. The actual cluster was larger than scanned and reported, filled with small LN mets like a little bag of BBs and smaller, and 3 large ones, 1.7 - 2.3 cm. The head surgeon appeared horrified, I got the impression they wouldn't have done the surgery if they had realized its true numerous, conglomerated LN nature.
If distant, LN are considered likely disseminated, although single LN sites are now more often considered resectable. A quarter of my wife's LN cluster contained mets from 1 mm micromet to a 23 mm met with extensions. Chemo had necrosed part of the LN cell loads, and apparently, certain cell types and not others.
We did keep more kinds of nicer chemistry targeted on my wife, sooner, longer, and more continuously than anyone else I've seen, to stop the metastatic LN spread, and kill post surgical residual cells that blossom at any opportunity, for some years until their exhaustion(?).