Tim's wife from New Jersey responded to yesterday's post with a question about multiple myeloma cure rates. I am not a physician. But my understanding is that a small percentage of myeloma patients could be considered "cured." In most cancers, five years cancer free is considered cured. Not so with myeloma. It almost always comes back. Note "almost!" The book 100 Questions & Answers about Myeloma deals with this issue at length. It doesn't give percentages, but does refer to allogeneic transplants as a possible cure. The oncologists that wrote the book state "Patients who have undergone an allogeneic stem cell transplant may in some cases be cured if their disease has not recurred after 5 years..." Tandem autologous transplants also seem to meet this standard as well. What about a single autologous transplant? Or Revlimid? Or Velcade? Who knows? But it is a fact that some patients remain in complete response, or remission and never relapse. Is the myeloma cured? Do you believe in miracles? Anecdotal evidence and the latest stats I read reveal that 10% of myeloma patients are still alive ten years after they start therapy. And as many as 10% of patients that achieve complete remission stay there for at least five years.
You know what they say: Plan for the worst but hope for the best!
Feel good and keep smiling! Pat
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment