annieli

Thank you for your responses! I live in Austin, but my mom lives in California. I will see if I can get a second opinion from UCLA. They will be testing for biomarkers, but the thought process was to start Chemo and Radiation first (because her SVC syndrome is pretty bad), and change the treatment if the biomarkers were present. My mom actually had to have a surgery biospy after a needle biospy resulted in a false negative, which is how she got her diagnosis. I will definitely ask again about immunotherapy again if she shows a high PD-L1 expression level in the tumor. What i was really hoping for was chemo, sbrt (radiation/cyberknife?) and immunotherpy as her treatment, but maybe when I talked to the oncologist it might have been premature to say immunotherapies were an option because they didn't have the biomaker testing done yet. But I will push for immunotherapy if there is PD-L1 expression.. Why wait till chemo has failed, when you can throw the kitchen sink at it to kill it..

Hello, My mom is currently in the hospital due to SVC syndrome, and was recently diagnosed Stage 3A NSCLC, SCC. The doctors are discussing chemotheray and radiation since they say that her tumor is non-operable. it's (8cm x 4cm). They say the tumor hasnt metastasized, and has not spread to any lymph nodes. However, it's around the arteries (that's why her SVC is causing her issues). The doctors are doing testing for biomarkers, but they discussing doing chemo/radiation before the results fully come out, which me and my mom both agree with. They plan to do carboplatin paclitaxel for chemotherapy. I asked about immunotherapy and they said that was only an option if the tumor metastasized. I was wondering if anyone had any similiar experiences, or suggests on what I should be asking her doctors. Thank you, Annie