My mum has SBC which has spread to her bones. Her tumor marker at the beginning of treatment was 417 and has now gone down to around 175, she is just coming up the end of her third chemo cycle. She is on Palbociclib and Letrozole.
Will the tumor ever reach zero? Or is this impossible? We know the cancer cannot be cured but wondered if she could be in remission if it got to Zero.
Is her tumor marker a good reading? It’s all very confusing!
I don’t know enough about a persons individual tumour marker counts but I don’t believe they can be zero. I think even people without cancer can have a certain ‘score’ although this would not be raised as it is with people who do have cancer. It also doesn’t mean everyone’s tumour markers start off the same number so the baseline may be different in each individual (or so I understand). Oncologists tend to use them to notice the trend rather than a diagnostic tool. If the trend is consistently downwards, as your Mums is, then it indicates that treatment is working. If it starts rising consistently it might mean it isn’t and therefore other investigations may be needed such as a scan. Just because it rises didn’t automatically mean a treatment has stopped being effective, mine went up once but the scan showed it was still working. As I’ve said, it’s more about the trend.
Remission is generally used as a term with primary BC, SBC is always there and almost always needs constant treatment whether it’s chemo, hormone or more targeted treatments (triple negativeBC being the exception as there can be gaps between chemo if no other treatments are appropriate) You can get No Evidence of Active Disease (NEAD) which is what we all hope our treatments produce, or that the mets (metastases) are stable or shrinking which is also good.
Hoping this helps with your question, someone else may be able to add more information.