Evaluating Response to Therapy.pdf

Evaluating Response to Therapy ▪ Patients can respond differently to the same treatment protocol and accordingly individualization of therapy should be more appropriate. ▪ However, as tumors and their hosts are heterogeneous, there are many crucial secondary problems related to the individualization...

Evaluating Response to Therapy ▪ Patients can respond differently to the same treatment protocol and accordingly individualization of therapy should be more appropriate. ▪ However, as tumors and their hosts are heterogeneous, there are many crucial secondary problems related to the individualization of therapy. ▪ The most important element in individualization of therapy is to be able to rapidly assess whether a chosen treatment strategy is effective. 18 Evaluating Response to Therapy ▪ Tumor volume changes observed during follow-up CT or MRI studies in principle can be used for evaluation of response to antitumor therapy. However, it is not early enough before the patient develops considerable toxicity and side effects from the prescribed chemotherapy. ▪ Radiopharmaceutical agents like Gallium in lymphoma and FDG in many tumors such as Lymphoma, lung, head and neck cancer, breast cancer and others have shown good results to predict response to a treatment regimen as early as after 1–3 cycles of chemotherapy. 19 Evaluating Response to Therapy Ga-67 study (a) in a patient with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Follow-up study (b) shows clearly an excellent response to chemotherapy evidenced by clearing of the foci of uptake noted in the first pretherapy study 20