Hello,
I was diagnosed with 21mm primary breast cancer (ER+, HER2+) in October 2022. I went through 5 cycles of chemo (EC and Docetaxel + PHESGO) from December and had a SLNB and WLE in April. The surgeon removed the tumour with clean margins and no LVI or node invasion was found. I am awaiting to start radiotherapy with booster and hormone therapy soon.
As some remaining active cancer cells were detected in the removed tumour, my targeted anti HR2 treatment needs to change. I cannot carry on with the PHESGO injections (NICE does not allow use of Pertuzumab in adjuvant setting for node negative patients), and was offered to start on either Trastuzumab emtansine (Kadcyla) or single Trastuzumab (Herceptin). I am reluctant to take Kadcyla as it has a combined chemo agent and I do not want to go back to this part of the treatment unless there is a clear benefit to it over the second option. No doctor is willing to confirm this at this point.
I cannot find any research papers explaining the benefits of one over the other as Kadcyla is very recent and has been studied with a wider cohort of patients with different stages and degrees of nodes invasion.
I would really appreciate it if somebody could point me out to specific literature or research so I can try to understand why I am being “pushed” in that direction.
Thank you!