Re: My Dad - CEA and Avastin (HELP)

[Guest guest]

Dear Nickie---I'll ask our oncologist when we go see him this week about

your concern. My mom has also been on Xeloda (3 rounds) and Avastin (2

times), and came back with clean PET and CT scans after having an earlier

scan show mets to omentum/peritoneum and liver and other abdominal sites

(stage IV colon cancer diagnosed in June of this year). She does NOT have

high levels of anything that can be tested, never did, even before her

surgery in June.

Our oncologist would love to put my mom on Erbitux ( " the gold standard " ) but

cannot unless she fails at a harsher chemo, which he hesitates to have her

on because of the harsh side effects. Jackie

[Guest guest]

Dear Nickie---I'll ask our oncologist when we go see him this week about

your concern. My mom has also been on Xeloda (3 rounds) and Avastin (2

times), and came back with clean PET and CT scans after having an earlier

scan show mets to omentum/peritoneum and liver and other abdominal sites

(stage IV colon cancer diagnosed in June of this year). She does NOT have

high levels of anything that can be tested, never did, even before her

surgery in June.

Our oncologist would love to put my mom on Erbitux ( " the gold standard " ) but

cannot unless she fails at a harsher chemo, which he hesitates to have her

on because of the harsh side effects. Jackie

[Guest guest]

Hi Nickie --

I think that 114 and 117 are the same reading, when you consider

margin of error, which I think can be something like 5% for the CEA

test from the same lab.

Barry

> Dear Friends,

> My dad is currently having his 8th cycle of Avastin/Xeloda (I'm at

the hospital right now). He gets tested monthly for CEA - before

Avastin, his CEA was about 134 in May. It started decreasing (lowest

was 112 in August). However, the last two CEA results in Sept and

Oct showed a slight increase of 114 and now 117 yesterday. His MRI

results showed that his lung mets are shrinking, nonexistent or

stable. There are two peritoneal mets that grew from a year ago,

but stabilized since July.

>

> Should I be concerned that Avastin is not going to work anymore

with the slight CEA increase? If anyone is or has been on

Avastin, I would like to know what their CEA levels were prior to

and during treatment.

>

> How long does Avastin work?

>

> Thank you for your help and god bless,

> Nickie

>

>

>

> __________________________________________________

>

[Guest guest]

Nickie,

I'll be a bit controversial here and probably people will come up

and say the my doc is a quack. I have Stage IV disease, and my doc

has only taken my CEA once - when I my wife insisted. I don't

remember the value, to be honest. His reasoning is that the CEA is

one more thing to worry about and in my current condition (I am in

treatment right now with other positive evidence of tumors), he

opines that there are much better diagnostic tools in imaging

(either CT or PET) than CEA to judge how the cancer is doing.

Although he did not mention it, CEAs can also fluctuate due to

chemotherapy and can actually increase when tumors are dying; in

this case, the exact opposite of what you think is happening is

actually happening. As opposed to during treatment, the literature

indicates that CEA is most useful in monitoring people for advance

or recurrance who are either off treatment or in remission.

Irregardless, I think that the differences in the CEA range that

you describe are not signficant enough to be indicative, even if

none of what I already said was true; I think that usually doctors

look for jumps from single digits up to double or triple digits as

indication of recurrance or worsening (depending on what the

baseline value was).

I have not read anything that suggests exactly how long Avastin

works. Like other chemo drugs, it varies with each individual and

the termination of its use can be either side effect induced or due

to resistance (not working any more). I know people who have been

on it for over six months now.

Joe

,

> Dear Friends,

> My dad is currently having his 8th cycle of Avastin/Xeloda (I'm at

the hospital right now). He gets tested monthly for CEA - before

Avastin, his CEA was about 134 in May. It started decreasing (lowest

was 112 in August). However, the last two CEA results in Sept and

Oct showed a slight increase of 114 and now 117 yesterday. His MRI

results showed that his lung mets are shrinking, nonexistent or

stable. There are two peritoneal mets that grew from a year ago,

but stabilized since July.

>

> Should I be concerned that Avastin is not going to work anymore

with the slight CEA increase? If anyone is or has been on

Avastin, I would like to know what their CEA levels were prior to

and during treatment.

>

> How long does Avastin work?

>

> Thank you for your help and god bless,

> Nickie

>

>

>

> __________________________________________________

>