It has come back...in the LNs...

[Siti]

This is why you should have chemo first before any targeted treatment.

Hi Eternal optimist,

I was wondering what do you mean by doing chemo first before any targeted treatment, do you mean targeted antibodies or did you mean removal of LNs?

Regards,
Siti

[Eternal optimist]

This is why you should have chemo first before any targeted treatment.

Hi Eternal optimist,

I was wondering what do you mean by doing chemo first before any targeted treatment, do you mean targeted antibodies or did you mean removal of LNs?

Regards,
Siti

Sorry I missed this Siti, I've been busy and away from the site over the summer. By targeted treatment I meant surgery or radiotherapy targeted at the nodes. Looking back now I realise it was a very confusing word to use when not talking about targeted therapies! Sorry for that too.

For many people para aortic lymph node mets are a bit like the advance guard of an army. A person has a scan that shows up PALN mets, then by their next scan they have had mets pop up in their organs or in more distant lymph nodes. This doesn't happen to everyone, some people just have a PALN recurrence without other mets growing soon afterwards. But to minimize the risk of more mets appearing it is better to have a systemic treatment ( like chemo, avastin or cetuximab) that will also treat any mets that are too small to see on a scan, than to give localised treatment to the PALN mets you can see.