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Thoughts on CA19 behavior close to nadir
Pancreatic Cancer | Last Active: 10 hours ago | Replies (7)Comment receiving replies
Thank you for this question. It comes at a good time as my husband is in similar situation as of this past Friday's chemo treatment. His doctors closely monitor his CA19-9 numbers as it's an indicator of HIS response to treatment (I know that's not the case for everyone). His numbers have showed a consistent decrease of about 15-20% between treatments. He's been on chemo for 13 months (with radiation also) and his Ca19 has decreased from 6,900 to 74 (4 weeks ago) to 54 (two weeks ago). However, similar to your situation, he had an uptick to 79 at his last chemo treatment on Friday. He was already scheduled for a CT and Signatera draw later this month so it will be interesting to see if this uptick is shown on those tests. Hopefully not. All of this to say, we're in the same boat! The above responses are informative. Glad you asked the question.
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@kevintexas I'm on chemo holiday now for a month and we'll decide at the end of August what to do after CT scan being taken. Hence I will not know my CA19 numbers until the end of the month.
I read few comments in past 2 days on this forum and I've found people commenting that numbers becomes less reliable as you approaching the normal range or your plateau. I think when you move from 6900 to let's say 5500 the movement is clean as the number is dominated by the tumor reduction why when you get close to the floor other things might play a role. This sort of makes sense to me despite I got really worried by the uptick.
Also a comment given by my oncologist: if CA19 tracks well tumor burden is way more reactive than scans. Scans lags behind in both directions.
I'm curious to see your next CA19 number as likely you will be testing before than me. Keep us updated.
Fingers crossed I guess we have no other options than waiting for next tests.