A Study Which Leads To Questions For Your Doctor
In February 2005, The New England Journal of Medicine reported the results of a study which was which was funded by the National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health and Corixa Corporation (which was bought by Glaxo Smith Kline). Researchers gave patients with advanced-stage follicular lymphoma one treatment of Bexxar. None of the patients had been treated with any other form of therapy. Ninety-five per cent had some response and seventy-five per cent had a complete response. After five years, more than three-fourths of patients with a complete response were disease free.
The results from this study are even more promising when compared to other studies using radioimmunotherapy after other therapies have failed. In those studies, seventy per cent of the patients responded to Bexxar with only twenty to thirty per cent achieving complete remission.
These results clearly show that radioimmunotherapy, which takes about one week to complete, is more promising when used earlier in treatment rather than later. With studies like these, I still cannot understand why radioimmunotherapy has not been widely embraced. There simply is nothing else available that has such a short treatment duration and is so easily tolerated - and so effective!
I can only suggest that you continue to ask your doctor about this treatment. If it is not included as a treatment option, an appropriate question would be "What are the chances of recurrence with the treatment plan you are recommending?" That's a question to which every patient deserves an answer before signing on to months of chemotherapy, Rituxan maintenance therapy, or worse, stem or bone marrow transplants.
Dont' ever be afraid to ask - your life may well depend on it!
Betsy