Beating Breast Cancer | Symptoms And Breast Cancer Treatment

Herceptin - Herceptin Overview Article

Herceptin - Wonder Drug or Not?

So much has been written about herceptin treatment for breast cancer recently that it can be difficult to figure out where the facts end and the hype starts.

Marjory will have herceptin added to Taxotere as part of her impending chemotherapy program and will then continue with the herceptin alone every three weeks for a year after that.

I've looked for ages for an easy to read article that gives a balanced view of the role of herceptin in breast cancer treatment. Today, I might have found it.

An article in the UK based Guardian Newspaper today (1st June 06) provides a good overview of the current state of play. It's written in easy to read language and summarises the research statistics in a down to earth way.

The author says:

"But before we get carried away with what has been called a "miracle drug", let us examine those statistics a little more carefully. About 40,000 people are newly diagnosed with breast cancer in the UK each year. Of these, around 10,000 have the type of tumours (known as HER2 positive) on which Herceptin works. So the drug is sadly irrelevant for 75% of breast cancer patients."

He then goes on to look at disease free survival rates with herceptin and overall survical rates too - drawing fair conclusions but downplaying the role of herceptin for the global population of breast cancer sufferers.

I take the point of the article author that you can draw many different conclusions from statistics and I also agree that it's important not to generate false hope in the group of women who by the nature of their disease will not be helped by herceptin.

But - for Marjory and thousands of women like her - with a herceptin sensitive tumour and positive lymph nodes the advent of herceptin and it's cousin drugs yet to come is nothing less than a godsend.

No doubt we'll be posting lots more about herceptin in the months to come - watch this space - but, for the meantime, have a read of the Guardian article and see what you make of it.

Gordon

We've published several herceptin information articles on this site - take a look for more informtation about how herceptin will be used for breast cancer treatment

posted by Marjory @ 9:48 AM

Have you found this article helpful?