I don't know if anyone else seen this, but here is a report made earlier this month by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in NYC, to the Journal of Clinical Oncology, questioning wether Erbitux shoould replace Cisplatin for chemoradiation in Locally Advanced Head and Neck Cancer, outside clinical trials, anytime soon, until further studies are done.

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

Paul

Thank you for posting that. MSKCC is highly regarded by OCF posters. Erbitux has been a hot button issue here (okay, I get all hot about it and make it an issue). This study sums up the reasons why my RO at a CCC now refuses to give Erbitux and instead uses Carboplatin or Cisplatin: his patients who he had given Erbitux have had more recurrences than those he treated with platinum chemo. Ironically, I asked my RO to treat me with this "miracle drug" based on all the glowing articles overstating the Bonner results (which really only showed that Erbitux works better than nothing at all for chemo) as well as the newspaper articles at the time about "mean" countries denying state insurance coverage for Erbitux.
As the article notes, the Clinical trial comparing Erbitux to Cisplatin will finally answer these questions, although my guess is that the trial may be discontinued once the preliminary results are in.
I was glad to see the sentence with footnote 16 about the analysis of the Spectrum trials showing that Erbitux did not play well with HPV when used to treat recurrence or metastasis, When I first posted that possibility, I got lots of pushback so a MSKCC article helps validate my concern.
This is one time I hope I am wrong as many OCF posters have relied upon Erbitux. Plus it's important not to overstate Erbitux's limitations, it does work, but has not been proven to work better or even as well as cisplatin and carboplatin. That's the information I wish I had known back in 2007.
Charm
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I knew someone mentioned their doctor not wanting to prescribe Erbitux anymore, and possibility of a report coming out, and my reason for posting this. The report also mentions disappointing findings combining Erbitux with Cisplatin for chemoradiation in HPV. I just completed treatment last month with Erbitux, but also with Taxotere. I had Cisplatin before, and to harsh for my kidneys now.

I only hope that we stay away from recurrence since Kev had Erbitux only with his IMRT. He did have the induction chemo with Cistplatin, 5FU and Taxotere, so hopefully we'll be ok. I know there are no guarantees either way.
Kathy

Kathy, I only had 5 days of induction chemo, with the same chemos, and it killed off everything, nearly me included lol, for 9 months, but Kevin is getting chemoradiation also, which is the key.