Post chemo monitoring scans

Imani

Did your hospital do any scans on you after toy were done with treatment?

My hospital will only do physical exams and do scans only if there are symptoms .

Curious to know what monitoring you are getting

Maskwearer72

Same here. I really struggled with that at first, but I've come to understand the reasoning. I was told that a local recurrence is going to be detected via a physical exam, either by your OB or oncologist (or finding something yourself). Scans are intended to pick up mets, but my MO told me that there is no science pointing to a difference in treatment plans or outcomes when mets are detected on scans vs. physical symptoms. Plus, the scans themselves can be carcinogenic, they are stressful, expensive, etc. so there are many downsides to annual scans.

moth

ASCO has survivorship guidelines

"Recommendation 1.3: It is recommended that primary care clinicians should not offer routine laboratory tests or imaging, except mammography if indicated, for the detection of disease recurrence in the absence of symptoms (LOE = 2A)."

https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/fu...

table 1