I have written on here once or twice regarding my sister, who is 46. She had DCIS, 7 years ago which resulted in a mastectomy, but no further treatment and last September was diagnosed with HER2 positive invasive cancer after feeling a slight lump under her armpit. She had 12 chemo sessions followed by radiotherapy and is now on tamoxifen and has started 3 weekly sessions of Hercaptin for a year. What I would like to know is - do you generally only have a years worth of Hercaptin, or can you have it for longer and do we know if there are any benefits on having it for longer??
I don't know if anyone has any ideas or thoughts about this, but I would be very grateful to hear them.
I have secondaries and have been on it since Jan 04. At that time I had exhausted all chemos available and as herceptin has worked well for me I am staying on it for as long as it continues to.
hi i have just started herceptin and have a year of it.. i was asked if i wanted to do a trial. the trial is for 6 months of it. they want to see what difference it makes to heart etc... apparently in Finland they only have it for weeks not a year not sure how long but over a very short time.... you still have the same strength though... when it was decided to give herceptin a year was the ball point fig as all new... now they think its not necessary to have it for a year and want to cut it down to 6 months hence the trial.... hope i make sense as not very good explaining things and i am sure someone will do better. take care and have a good night. my second dose is next Tuesday.
I had my 9th infusion of 3-weekly Herceptin today, I was prescribed 17 in all (one year). Mine is for primary HER-2 positive breast cancer. Like your sister, it manifested itself as a lump deep in the armpit, it was a miracle I noticed it actually. Lump turned out to be a lymph gland containing bc cells, but finding the primary in the breast was difficult, and only an MRI scan picked up breast tumours.
As Dawn has said, secondary HER2-positive tumours are treated with Herceptin longer term.