Immunotherapy: How many lung cancer patients are 5 yrs post diagnosis?

Hi @lls8000 I went to the primary doc yesterday n he suggested chemo 4 cycyles and as i have EGFR L858 mutation to go on tagrisso post that for 3 years citing the Flaura results. Yes, its very expensive in India. I am looking for financial assistance as my insurance can cover it or not i need to know n if so also it would be not more than 7 to 8 months. If there is any international assistance program on tagrisso you know of then please let me know. Thanks a lot for your feedback n the useful links you shared. I am going ahead with chemo as the flaura results were also based on combination therapy where chemo after surgery was given followed by tagrisso. It feels really goid to talk to peers as in India very few lung cancer support groups are there.

Sanyogita15,
Regarding financial assistance to defray the cost of Tagrisso you can go to the AstraZeneca Tagrisso website and explore the link they have for patient reimbursement plans….hopefully you will qualify.

Regarding your upcoming chemo treatments have they informed you which drugs you will be receiving?

Yes they have... platinum therapy using Pemetrexed combined with cisplatin
after surgery. my 5 weeks of surgery are done and they are starting coming
thursday 4 cycles.

also, do astrazeneca website enroll international patients because they ask
for citizenship of USA when i saw that website.

I have also joined the lung cancer n egfr resisters group. N am so glad to see stage 4 cancer survivors of 10 years plus many people on tagrisso are carrying on 5 6 or 7 years with Tagrisso. So glad. God bless you all.

I was diagnosed in August of 2019, had a bi-lobectomy in 2020, recurred in 2020 4 months later, did immunochemistry test for PD-L1 pos for 85%. so was put on Keytruda late 2020 have been on it ever since. No recurrence yet but may be stopping treatment due to they do not know if I am getting any benefit from it still. So, I guess one way to find out is to discontinue for a while and follow up every 6 weeks and CT scan or PET/CT every 3 months. I am scared but I have lived this long, thankfully.

Welcome to Mayo Connect @sjohnson60. Congrats on nearly 5 years since your initial diagnosis! I'm sure it hasn't been easy. Any change in treatment is scary. I'm hoping that the Keytruda has been effective for you. Monitoring you with follow ups and scans is a great plan. Did you experience on going side effects from the treatment? If you do have growth in the future, can you be placed back on Keytruda after this break?