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Ibrance and Letrozole: Newly Diagnosed Treatment
Breast Cancer | Last Active: Jan 22, 2023 | Replies (104)Comment receiving replies
You have to be careful with looking at the percentages and know whether they are telling you the "absolute" percentage or the "relative" percentage. You need to ask that question.
For instance, in my age group, if I do not have radiation there is a 6% chance of me having the cancer return - which means there is a 94% chance it won't! That is the ABSOLUTE percentage. If I have the radiation it reduces the chance of me getting the cancer back to 3%.
Now when the oncologist was telling me about the anastrozole, she said if I took it, it would reduce my chances of getting the cancer back by 50% because if you compare the 6% chance to the 3% chance - that is a 50% reduction, but it is the RELATIVE percentage - in other words, 6% compared to 3%. BUT the absolute value is that without the anti-hormone therapy or radiation I had a 94 % chance of getting it back, and with the therapies, I had a 97% chance of getting it back. For a 3% chance, it was not worth it to me to brave the side effects.
Replies to "You have to be careful with looking at the percentages and know whether they are telling..."
I work with statistics and have not seen the word 'absolute' used with respect to any cancer risk or expected outcomes in general. Or used for macro statistics at all.. So I think, but am not certain, that you are differentiating between thr industry mean (average) reduction, what you're terming "absolute", versus any one individual's actual likely reduction benefit (what you refer to as relative)?
At any rate, I tried to find data that delineated the mean (the average), the mode and the median for the purported reduction benefit for taking an aromatase inhibitor as those would be more valuable than the mean/average. Since the mean blends a large population of people with vastly different genetics, health profiles, nutrition, access to healthcare choices, etc. And one's own likely benefit can be greater or less.
I've not seen any hard data of recurrence risk rates by age, by cancer tumor profile, though I know that there are some rough estimates. The problem with breast cancer among older women is that there is so little quality data in part because there has historically been little to no real screening for breast cancer among women over 60-65 until relatively recently.
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Maybe you could share this information on a new thread about oncotype testing. Maybe this current thread about using oncotype to decide on treatment could be expanded with all of this information.
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/oncotype-result/?pg=2#chv4-comment-stream-header
Have you taken Ibrance and letrozole combo or another combo for metastatic breast cancer? What challenges have you had from this drug combination?