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.