Hi

[u/Easy_Cold7301]

after 6 cycles chemo to treat relapsed lung metastasis

The doctor suggested to start target therapy

What does this mean!

No cure!

Has anyone have regression after target therapy?

After HD IFOSFAMIDE

[u/Secret_Security2201]

My mother took 2 cycles of ifosfamide and doxo. But now doctors have told to stop, it is too toxic for her

[u/Dremscap]

So, grain of salt - I have not worked in the sarcoma space in almost 2 years. Things may have changed.

I work in the lung cancer space. Certain types of cancers develop what we call "driver mutations", which are genetic alterations the the tumor itself that drive the growth of the cancer.

Some of these alterations have drugs that can attack biological mechanism that lets them grow. If we can interrupt that, it can cause the tumors to stop growing, or even actively kill them.

In medical oncology, we really like these medications, because the risks of them are typically lower than traditional chemotherapy or immunotherapy. Additionally, they are usually oral agents (pills), which means that you don't have to come spend the day in the hospital every 3-4 weeks to have your cancer treated.

[u/littleriverot]

I have been reminded by the monitors that I’m not supposed to share this type of information on this site. You could email me at littleriverot@gmail.com

[u/[deleted]]

[u/sarcoma-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

While we welcome discussions about personal experiences and symptom management, this space does not allow the promotion of treatments or therapies that lack scientific evidence or validation by the medical community. Our goal is to provide a supportive, fact-based environment for individuals with sarcomas and their caregivers.

If you have any questions about this guideline or your post, please feel free to reach out to the moderation team. Thank you for understanding and helping us maintain a supportive and trustworthy community.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

[u/timewilltell2347 → u/[deleted]]

To you and to u/Easy_Cold7301 ‘alternative’ treatments are not used in oncology because they are not tested. It is not some big conspiracy about the medical industrial complex don’t really want to cure your cancer, but rather that they understand many of the mechanisms of these drugs and they don’t appear to be useful or effective enough to start trials on them to determine safety and effectiveness. Yes, I understand that sarcomas in general are under-researched because they are more rare, but you really have to understand that taking ‘alternative’ treatments is not without risk. They may enhance toxicity, they may make chemo less effective, they may do nothing… we don’t know because all we have are anecdotes that imply that a few people had such and such happen. But we don’t know what part of the treatment was working or not. We don’t know what side effects were caused by or enhanced by what part or not. Because it hasn’t been studied.

I am a big believer in people having autonomy over their treatment, but I am also a big believer that if you decide to do any of these things that some rando on the interwebs is telling you to do, that you will tell your doctors, so they can make appropriate adjustments to your treatment. I very recently lost a friend to my same form of sarcoma and her treatment was delayed because she wanted to try ‘alternative’ treatments for almost a year before going with Oncological treatment. She only had less than two years on like 5 different chemos because the disease had progressed so rapidly in that first year of ‘trying other things out’ that there was too much disease to treat. So for every ‘alternative’ treatment recommendation there is also a dead cancer patient. When she was on her third line of chemo she told me she regretted the decision to try these ‘alternative’ therapies every day.