Malwicker

I wish you the very best in your treatment. Someone posted on the board a while back that Erbitux saved there life. Hopefully you will get some good results from your treatment. I know its no walk in the park but Hang in there through the side effects. Time will pass and you will be recovering soon.

Good Luck
Heidi

Malwicker - so happy this is working for you. The side effects suck but it sounds like you are slowly gaining ground so this is great. Hugs.

Thanks everyone. I start seven rounds of Erbitux next week and was basically given the breakdown shared here. I had Cisplatin 8 years ago and I was told that although it won't be a walk in the park this will be much easier on my system! Ready to roll and get back to another new "Normal."

My thanks as well to everyone who posted on this topic. I just started on cetuximab last week so reading what you guys have to say has been helpful.

Before starting on cetuximab I did some research with my friend Google and found some interesting info. If you also decide to look into it, you'll come across frequent mention of two clinical trials, the Bonner trial and the EXTREME trial. In both trials, cetuximab prolonged survival and had other quality of life benefits.

The Bonner trial was for patients with locoregional advanced HNSCC and measured effectiveness of cetuximab when given with radiation. There's plenty of articles on it, you can find them by googling "cetuximab" and "Bonner" or read this one: http://www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials/results/summary/2010/head-neck-cetuximab0604

The EXTREME trial differed from the Bonner trial in two respects. Instead of patients with locoregional advanced HNSCC, it was performed with patients having recurrent and/or metastatic HNSCC, and instead of measuring efficacy in conjunction with radiation, it measured efficacy when used in conjunction with platinum-based chemo. You can find plenty more info by googling "cetuximab" and "extreme"; here's a recap of it on cancer.gov: http://www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials/results/summary/2007/cetuximab-head-neck0607

Hopefully this won't apply to anyone here, but cetuximab is/was primarily used for colorectal cancer. Happily, it was found to also work on HNSCC. When researching cetuximab, you'll come across plenty of articles on colorectal cancer, so you can hopefully disregard that info.

Andrew, In reading your post one thing resonated with me. I was told that this drug would benefit my quality of life from a side effect standpoint. If it's doing the job then who would want to disagree with that type of thinking! The majority of us go through plenty during our journey anyway!

Thank you for sharing your research.

Andrew, these are old Trials/studies.
The Bonner trial does state that the outcome for patients treated with radiation and Erbitux was better than for those just treated with radiation. It also states that the outcome for patients treated with radiation and Erbitux was still not as good as for those treated with the standard radiation and Cisplatin/Carboplatin.
I don't want to rain on your good news about Erbitux. I'm sure someone with more knowledge than me will come along shortly and post links to more up to date trials.
Hope all goes well for your treatments .
Tammy

Tammy, I merely noted Bonner and EXTREME since they are landmark trials and I wanted to provide background info for anyone who may not have been familiar with them. (I imagine a lot of people here are already aware of them but they had not yet been mentioned in this thread.)

Unfortunately, it is true that cetuximab w/radiation is not as effective as standard CRT (it was not the intent of the Bonner trial to compare them.)

I may be completely wrong about this, but it is my impression that cetuximab is regarded as the best alternative for those patients in whom a more intense treatment of platinum-based chemo is not the best option. It also seems, as I understand it, to be regarded as the best option for those who have already undergone one of the standard platinum chemo txs.

Please correct me, someone/anyone, if I am wrong about that. I will have to search this site for previous discussions of cetuximab to further educate myself. You guys who have been there, done that are a wonderful source of knowledge, as well as inspiration and hope. Thanks for all you do.

And Tammy, thanks for the best wishes. I'm also wishing the continued best for you and your husband and family.

Here is a 2012 article from MSKCC to the editors of The Journal of Clinical Oncology about Erbitux replacing Cisplatin, outside clinical trials, that may be of interest for further reading. The RTOG 1016 trial testing the efficacy of Erbitux vs Cisplatin is still on going, I believe, and not completed yet. There were quite a few discussions on this blog regarding Erbitux a few years ago.

http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/early/2012/11/30/JCO.2012.46.9049

Thanks Paul. I had you in mind as being the more knowledgable person re the trials and Erbitux.
Hope all is well with you,
Tammy