Recurrence/Relapse

[Lori]

Dr. Einhorn told us Jon was in remission from the day his HCG normalized and after two years it is considered cured.

Jon also had a lot of teratoma and the time frame for cure is 5 years instead of 2.

[dadmo]

I believe that for non-seminoma patients you are in remission when you have no signs of cancer an you are considered cured when you pass two years of remission.

[Fed]

A cancer remission is a disappearance of its symptoms and its signs. It can either be partial or complete. Cure, in its strictest of definitions, would mean that it's completely gone and the chances of a recurrence are zero (or near zero).

[jaybird]

I hope you never have to go through the rplnd also. I did the hockey stick incision where they take out a rib. This has created a lot back and rib pain till this day. Some guys seem to recover better than others though.

[AdrianB1971]

.

NonSeminoma [NS] has a greater rate of relapse than seminoma within first 2 years. But, late relapses has been oberved especialy in seminoma and unresected teratoma cases [even after 15 years]. RPLND avoid any late abdominal lymph node relapse. Therefore, I agree that in stage II NS, 2xBEP + RPLND has a very,very low rate of late relapse [but not 0 !]. RPLND eliminates the posible abdominal recurrence sites and 2xBEP cleanup the whole system from any vascular invasion.
I hate RPLND ! [I never had and I hope never will]

[jaybird]

thanks guys.

I've just been doing research on late replases. It seem to happen roughly 2 percent of the time however it seems that most of these articles note that stage II patients that have had a successful rplnd + 2 cycles of bep seem to never relapse.

I hope they are right

[Scott]

Ditto. Relapse and recurrence are synonyms.

[Fed]

I think both terms are interchangeable.

[jaybird]

Is there a difference in meaning between these two terms when reading clinical studies? For instance on TCRC when Dr. Craig Nic. talks about patients with clinical non-sem. stage II that have the rplnd and two courses of BEP virtually never have a recurrence. He he not talking about late relapses?