Tamoxifin & Liver Mets

jan-m

A friend has just been diagnosed with liver mets & is starting her treatment with Tamoxifan to shrink the tumour, has anyone gone this route & if yes how did it work for you?  She was on Arimadex for a year.

jan-m

I wonder.. should I post this somewhere else?

nancyh

Hey Jan-m,

Post on the stage 4 boards and you'll get more info.  I'll share my two cents here since you asked.  First, I'm really sorry for your friend, getting the news of a recurrence is so hard.  Hope you are both hanging in there.  

As for tamoxifen after arimidex, it sounds okay, though to be perfectly honest it sounds like a conservative treatment when there are bigger guns available.  On the other hand, tamoxifen is a surprisingly powerful weapon (something I totally took for granted back when I was stage 2, but now appreciate because it can work miracles with very low toxicity).  Anyway, other treatments that come to mind for initial treatment of liver mets are taxol or Abraxane, gemzar, navelbine, or perhaps Xeloda.  These are all chemos, but there are also a bunch of hormonal treatments work through different pathways than Arimidex, such as aromasin.  The thing that would worry me about starting wtih tamoxifen is that (from my understanding) it is very similar to arimidex.  If your friend has developed mets while on Arimadex I would want to switch things up a bit.  The idea is to blindside the cancer so it doesn't know what hit it, if that makes sense.

Best wishes to you.  Please do come post on the stage 4 board, it gets a lot more traffic and the other gals will welcome you and your friend.

Warm hugs,

NancyH 

jan-m

Thank you for your advice nancyh & I will try posting in the other forum.