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It's big news here (US) that they've stopped a trial early, because of
the dramatic increase in disease-free survival in the chemo+herceptin
arm, in order to add herceptin for the control group.

A few points I've gathered only from the news reports (dangerous source!):

- Of course, this applies only to the Her+ group, which is only about
30% of BC cases
- The trial was testing a combination of standard chemo plus Herceptin
(one doctor interviewed described it as a "one-two punch") against
standard chemo alone
- The side effect rates (possibly gleaned from other longer-term studies
than this one; not clear) was much lower than the DFS improvement, i.e.,
cost/benefit was strongly positive.
- Overall survival data isn't yet available, and presumably won't be
coming from this study given the treatment change being made.

Speaking to Bea's case specifically:  I don't know whether she would've
been eligible for the trial when she had chemo (don't know when the
trial started).  The terms of the trial, though, appear not to apply to
cases where one has already been treated with chemo in the past.  The
success seems to have involved using both agents in some kind of
combined regimen, not a sequential process with a time gap, or an
evaluation of Herceptin alone.

One of the things about being a long(er) term BC survivor, is that as
treatments improve, there are things we just miss out on, that could've
helped us if they'd been known when we were first treated.  It's scary,
but we usually can't turn back the clock & benefit from the new info.

Asking the oncologist can't hurt, though.

Ann T.
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