Dear Doctors Weiss and West:
Thank you both for elaborate comments. Last year my wife was diagnosed with lung cancer Stage IV. Mucin secreting adenocarcinomas with brancheoalveolar components. The disease was restricted to lungs with tiny nodules spread across both the lungs. She was treated with Pemetrexed and Cisplatin for 6 cycles. However, Chemos did not help and status quo was getting maintained as revealed by PET-CT scan. Currently she is undergoing treatment with Docetaxel as a second line of defense after 6 months of drug holiday.
She was negative for EGFR mutations which precluded use of TK inhibitors. At present I am not aware of facilities in India to carry out ALK-4 mutation analysis or KRAS mutation analysis.
After reading and consulting with our oncologist, I realized that the chemo options are running out and only option available is emperical treatment to go with TK inhibitors. Moreover other inhibitors are not available here.
Your comments or suggestions will be extremely helpful.
Krishnan
Reply # - June 22, 2012, 02:08 AM
Reply To: Mucin secreting adenocarcinoma.
Hello, I"m sorry your wife is in this awful situation. You have probably read Dr. West's blogs on bac however in case you haven't I've pasted a link below to a thread describing a similar diagnosis and includes Dr. West's suggested reading links.
http://cancergrace.org/forums/index.php?topic=8756.0
It sounds like your wife has maintained status quo/stability. Unless the cancer is causing pain or blockage stable is considered very good indeed. I hope she maintains for a long while.
Janine
Reply # - June 22, 2012, 03:27 PM
Reply To: Mucin secreting adenocarcinoma.
I'm sorry to hear of her progression. As you said, trying an EGFR inhibitor is still an appropriate consideration, even in someone without an EGFR mutation. Otherwise, if she has a response or prolonged stable disease on second line Taxotere (docetaxel), I think that a reasonable argument could be made to consider third line chemo, even a less proven approach like gemcitabine or perhaps vinorelbine. It's important to acknowledge that these aren't as well studied and not proven to be beneficial, but if there's anyone who could potentially benefit from third line chemo, it's a person who appeared to truly benefit from second line chemotherapy.
Good luck.
-Dr. West
PS: In the future, please start any lung cancer-related threads in the forum dedicated to lung cancer, which you can get to by going to the navigation bar tab for "Ask a Question About ____" and then clicking on "Lung Cancer" under that tab.