Hi All,

Ethyol is a medicine given prior to radiation therapy sessions (exactly 20-30 minutes prior) via injection. It's supposed to help in protecting the parotids (salivary glands) from becoming as damaged from radiation as they would otherwise. To those of tyou who don't know it, loss of salivary function can be very debilitating and is one of the more severe side effects people undergoing Rt experience long term.

The problem many seem to have is nausea about 30-60 minutes after their injection.

But my father in law took Ethyol every day of his IMRT with no nausea whatsoever. He was also doing Erbitux once weekly, and had no problems with it on those days either. He completes his IMRT tomorrow.

I can only guess one of the following things has allowed papa to be nausea free with his Ethyol as compared with others who have posted about it. 1. He was just super lucky. 2. He was given proper anti-nausea (taking emercet orally 3 times daily PLUS he had an injection of emercet exactly 15 minutes before his ethyol). 3. He wasn't being given real Ethyol and we were duped by the person we bought it from ( possible in India but not very likely) 4. Most people (especially in the UK or with crappy insurance) are not being given brand name Ethyol, but in fact have been taking generic Amifostine. The case in India is that people on generic amifostine also report severe nausea problems and are usually unable to complete Rt using Ethyol all the way through.

So I am cusrious about this occurence. Anyone else have an opinion? The main thing I wanted to point out is the name/frequency of anti-nausea medications Papa used in the event that somebody here is hopinh to stay on Ethyol. I personally suspect anti-nausea meds is sommething docs in the west aren't addressing properly. But I could be wrong.

So far, papa hasn't reported much problems with dry mouth, but it is just at the end of his treatment, and I am not sure when dry mouth/parotid damage is expected to show itself.

One final note: if you have time before your RT begins (at least two weeks) do look into something called radiation stends in lieu of having to take ethyol. There are many different kinds of stends used to either block the parotids (and other organs) or move them out of the field during Rt that appear more effective than ethyol. These are made by prosthodintists and many oncologists don't know about them.

They are spelled 'stent', just like the ones used to keep arteries open, but physically different. Here's a link:

http://www.mdanderson.org/departmen...p;pn=dc30f0bf-7545-11d4-aec300508bdcce3a

A friend of mine had a similar tumor and surgery as my own first round, then had IMRT at Anderson, with dental and saliva stents, and, unlike me, she retained most of her saliva. Based on that, I highly recommend them!!

I had ethyol/amifostine for half of my XRT, but had to discontinue it because I developed an allergy to it. Had no problems with nausea and took no meds.

Discontinuing it made a difference in my treatment experience because I didn't have to come in early, take shot and wait for it to be effective before my blasting sessions.

Darned expensive, also!

I was told with IMRT that Amifostine is usually only considered when there are large (bulky) lymph nodes adjacent to the salivary glands so that it is difficult to avoid high doses to the salivary glands.

I was also told that several RT systems including Tomotherapy can usually treat these areas effectively without the need for Amifostine.

It was also mentioned that questions persist in regards to long term effects related to the modest level of protection Amifostine seems to also provide to the tumor(cancer).

I had daily Amifostine for each of my 39 IMRT treatments, even though I did not have any bulky nodes near radiation field. (I had bilateral neck dissection prior to IMRT). I had transient nausea (a few minutes) for about the last 4 weeks of treatment, but nothing that could be characterized as signficant.

I had both submadibular glands removed during the neck dissection, so they wanted to preserve as much function as possible. There are lots of theories, but the amifostine/cancer connection is not prevailing thought.

I have decent salivary function today, some days better than others, but have no way of knowing what it would have been without the Amifostine.

Hi Marma !

Hows ur father in law doin ? its been a long time since i have been on OCF .