I wanted to ask for your experience of tumour markers results. I have been getting them every three weeks since I was first put on treatment, and thankfully they have been dropping (from a very high start point) every time until recently when they seem to be staying put, going up and down slightly but hovering in the high 70’s/early 80’s. Is this it? Have I plateaued and the only way now is up?
At what point can I be fairly confident that the disease has stabilised and therefore, whilst still present in metastatic sites at diagnosis, is not actually spreading anywhere else? I hate to think it is on the move…
I know we are not supposed to look at these results in isolation (and should think about how well we feel and CT scans too) but being a quantitative researcher, I am very fond of numbers and trends, and cant help hanging on these numbers every 3 weeks. Experience of these for your situations would be very helpful!!
My tumour marker results are always one cycle behind as I generally have my blood test the same afternoon as my appointment with the Oncologist. When they went up recently (I was on tamoxifen for the holidays) my Oncologist didn’t seem bothered - my count being comparatively low compared with those of many of his patients. But I am determined to see them go down so I can feel the cancer is under control.
Hi, I have had the CA15-3 and the CEA markers taken for the last eleven years now. As markers can read into the thousands seems, to me, consistent readings of 70, 80 are pretty stable. My markers have varied on the various treatments, tamoxifen worked for 18 months and gave me markers, CA15-3, of around 40. Arimidex worked, the first time around for four years with markers at late 30’s- early 40’s. Capecitabine worked for nearly five years and markers were hovering, for the most part, around fifty.
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Hello. Just thought I would tell you my experience with TMs. After initial surgery and being put on LETROZOLE I had a huge drop in TM numbers. The BCN rang to tell me. She said thst she couldn’t go into the science of it all but the simple explanation is thst we all have a certain number of these cells in our body…the average number for a non-cancer person is 31. When we have cancer it excretes more of these cells into our bloodstream and these can be measured. My initial number was 412 and after just 2 months they had gone down to 108. In the 2 years since then they have continued to fall at every blood test and they are now st 39…
When I saw Onc at around that initial time he told me that this was not an exact science…some people can have numbers in the thousands and what they are looking for is the general trend…which shows thst treatment is working…they can go up a little and not be of any particular concern. I asked if they only used TMs to monitor and he said that they did regular scans as well. When I asked how often he said every six months.
It is a year now since I had a scan so I asked for one (had it this week - awaiting results). He was reluctant he said that since TMs were going down it wasn’t necessary. I reminded him of his comment that it wasn’t an exact science and I’d been told scan every 6 Months…and I was getting more achey and worried about other SEs being cancer progression. He then said that when they did blood tests before Zometa every 4 weeks they checked several other things as well as TMs, which were also indicators, and that these were all fine and showing that the treatment was working…but I have had the scan and hope he is right. Don’t like to doubt him because he is obviously a very clever man…
When I Was first diagnosed they did a MRI scan on my other breast and told me that it was clear…however when they did histology on it after a reduction they found lots of small tumours in it…all less than 2mms. They told me that tumours under 2mm do not show on scans.
Since then I have been to a “managing secondary breast cancer” meeting and the consultant said there that blood tests are preferable to scans, because some tumours don’t show on scans - especially small ones.
So food for thought…I now better understand where my ONC was coming from…I am very happy when I am told my TMs have fallen…but would still like regular scans as well…like most of us I want it all.