For those of you who have read my book Outliving Cancer you will recognize the chapter entitled “Outliving Hospice.” It is the description of one of my lung cancer patients. {{cta('74e18bd4-90d3-47ab-b886-7dbeba7cffc8','justifyright')}}
The saga began in 2005, when this gentleman with metastatic lung cancer under the care of the Veteran's Administration in Los Angeles presented to our group requesting a biopsy for an EVA-PCD functional profiling assay to select therapy.
Diagnosed some months earlier his lung cancer had progressed following first line platinum-based chemotherapy. He was deemed untreatable and placed on hospice.
At his request, one of our surgical colleagues conducted a biopsy and identified a treatment combination borrowed from work done some years earlier by Japanese investigators. It worked perfectly for a year allowing him to return to a normal life.
At year two however, he relapsed.
At that point, we confronted a dilemma – would we accept the inevitability of his progressive disease, fold our tent, and allow the patient to return to hospice care; or conduct yet another biopsy to determine the next line of therapy?
If you have read the book, then you know how the story plays out.
The new biopsy revealed the unexpected finding that the tumor had completely clocked around to an EGFR-driven cancer, highly sensitive to erlotinib (Tarceva). Placed upon oral Tarceva, he has been in remission ever since.
When I saw Rick, two weeks ago at our six month routine follow up he provided a copy of his February 2014 PET/CT scans which, once again, revealed no evidence of progressive disease. With the exception of the skin rashes associated with the therapy, he maintains a completely normal life.
During our discussion he apprised me of an interesting fact.
His survival, now approaching 10 years, according to him, constitutes not only the longest survivorship for any patient under the care of the Los Angeles VA, nor any patient under the care of the VA in California, no, he is the longest surviving actively treated metastatic non-small cell lung cancer under the care of the Veteran's Administration. Period!
While I cannot, with certainty, vouch for this fact, I am quite certain that he is among the best outcomes that I have seen.
There are several points to be gleaned.
The first is that every patient deserves the best possible outcome. The second is that hospice care is in the eye of the beholder. The third is that patients must take charge of their own care and demand the best possible interventions available.
As an aside, you might imagine that a federal agency responsible for the costly care of tens of thousands of lung cancer patients every year would pay attention to results like Rick’s.
Might there be other patients who could benefit from Ex-Vivo Analysis functional profiling test for the correct selection of chemotherapeutics? One can only wonder.
As always, I appreciate your thoughts and comments.
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