What are appropriate goals in treating recurrent disease?
We know that many patients whom we treat in the recurrent disease setting will go into remission, but not all patients will. One of the things we have to ask ourselves as we start out on therapy is, are there any treatment choices that I might make today that might impact my treatment options down the line? That’s particularly important for patients who have an early time of disease recurrence. For example, the patients whose disease recurs 6-9 months after their initial therapy, while very treatable, the chance of those patients going into another complete remission is actually small. We have to recognize that whatever treatment we start out with, six months down the line, if the patient has had a minor response or a partial response to therapy or if she has had an even, stable disease, sometimes the treatment choices that we make are limited later. In other words, you can’t continue that therapy for six, twelve months, an even longer period of time, even if the patients are benefitin
