Non small cell carcinoma (lung)...metastasis - 1265218

Hi Jenny,

Welcome to GRACE. I'm sorry to hear of your mom's recurrence. Most thoracic oncologists do not speak in terms of "remission", especially with metastatic lung cancer. When post-treatment scans show no evidence of disease ("NED"), this is called a "complete response". If tumors have shrunk but still appear on scans, the patient has had a "partial response". If the tumors are still visible but have not grown, the patient's cancer is "stable". Of course everyone would like a complete response, but each of these results is good and a possible result of treatment, and although a complete response is more likely after first-line treatment, we need look no farther than GRACE moderator Janine's husband, who after several lines of treatment has gotten scans which show NED.

So each patient's response to treatment is a bit different, and we will hope that after your mom's next treatment she too achieves a NED status.

JimC
Forum moderator

Yes, it's fair to be hopeful about a complete response and achieving no evidence of disease, but that's much less common than we'd like. Far more people demonstrate significant shrinkage but some residual disease, which is still overwhelmingly likely to lead to prolonged survival. Many more people experience minor shrinkage or stable disease, which also typically improves survival.

Good luck.

-Dr. West

The comments Jim and Dr. West provided refer to any present or future tumors not just the original. If the liver mass is cancer the doctors will most likely want to treat her with a systemic therapy such as chemo, a trial drug or if she has an activating mutation a targeted therapy such as tarceva. Unless I'm mistaken as long as there is enough for testing mutation testing can be done on any of the cancer tissue they have from the brain mets or archived from original tumor (the primary tumor). We have an abundance of info on all these types of treatment if/when needed.

Perhaps the term complete response? It means there isn't cancer that is detectable by imaging. If the cancer has metastasized outside the lung of the primary tumor it's overwhelmingly probable that there are circulating cancer cells in the blood and or lymph systems. These circulating cancer cells aren't detectable on imaging but they are most likely to attach themselves to another organ (such as liver) and multiply.

I'm the lucky person Jim referred to. It will be 5 years from diagnosis in 23 days and 23 days to followup CT.
I wish much luck to your mom and don't hesitate to get clarification we have a plethora of info.

Janine

One the cancer has spread to other parts of the body, it doesn't really matter what happened in one part or another. When a cancer is in multiple places, there isn't any value in focusing on only one location, and we know that in addition to what is visible, there is also invisible disease that you're hoping to treat at the same time.

-Dr. West