Survivors who have used only alternative treatments
Comments
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I'm kind of a geek, so I think of this as kind of a math problem.
Your onc should have told you your risk or death from breast cancer without any further treatment. If this risk is acceptable to you, then you don't need treatment and you are good to go. If this risk is too high for you, then you consider treatment. You prefer alt to conventional treatment... So you see what your risk reduction will be with alternative treatment, ideally from well conducted clinical trials. Take your risk from no further treatment, subtract out the benefit from the alt treatment and you have your risk with alt treatment. If this risk is acceptable, then you are good to go. If this risk is not acceptable, then perhaps consider adding conventional treatment to bring your total risk down further.
I looked up your recurrence risk on Adjuvant online. According to adjuvant online, the risk of death from cancer over the next 10 years is 63%. 36.4% are alive in 10 years. 62.7% die of cancer and 0.9% die of other causes. Just to make sure we don't give too much weight to numbers that may not be accurate, lets assume that Adjuvant overstates your risk, lets say your risk of death from cancer is only 50%, not the 63% Adjuvant predicts. If you are okay with this risk, no further treatment is needed. If this risk is too high, you may want to consider alt treatment since you prefer this to conventional treatment. If the alt treatment reduces your risk to an acceptable level, then no conventional treatment is needed, you are good to go. If the alt treatment will not reduce your risk to an acceptable level you may want to consider conventional treatment. What is the risk reduction from alt treatment? (I don't have this information). If your risk reduction from alt treatment is adequate your are good to go. Since I don't have the real number, just for illustration purposes, lets say the alt treatment reduces your risk of death by 50% (relative), then your risk of death over the next 10 years is only 25%, if this risk is acceptable, no further treatment is needed, if it is not acceptable, you may want to consider conventional treatment too.
The numbers I used in the above example may be a little on the optimistic side. Adjuvant says the risk of death from breast cancer is 62.7% (36.4% chance of being alive), and its pretty rare that a treatment provides a 50% relative risk reduction, however, I don't want to be accused of fear mongering. So I suggest putting in the numbers you think are accurate... risk without treatment, reduction with risk with alt treatment and reduction in risk with conventional treatment and decide for yourself how much risk is acceptable to you versus the side effects of therapy.
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Elmcity. Unless I've missed something, wornoutmum has not disrespected any one else's choice, just asking people to respect her choice.
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Member sorry if I mistook you for having anger at Ruth H but you did call her irresponsilbe and fraudulent. She did the vegan diet as her treatment as she explains. If I took a cold medicine for a cough and the cough went away then I would probably tell people it was due to the cough medicine. As with the current accepted treatments for BC. If you chose a method for it and you surviovor it is human nature to attribute your success to that treatment so why does her telling her story equate to being irresponsible and fruadlent is my question?
Elmcity if you notice on here I repeatedly say all BC surviivors should be able to celebrate their victory. Just curious if you read them all or jumped to the last few pages. I have have given respect to others and mulitple times kept my research out of it out of respect. I have questioned why there is such attacking on one another and how I appreciated ALL stories. Look how much bashing took place before I commented and was personally told how sad I made someone for nothing more than trying to make an informed decision. I think you may have misunderstood my words as it is an email. I do appologize if you misinterperted me saying that most can not do the alternative let me clairify. My thoughts on this is not to down play in anyway what a chemo patient goes though!! I have seen exactly what they go through. I have doctors on both sides recall. With normal standards I am looking at 1 year of treatment. NO downplay at all in what will occure those months as I watched someone die from this first hand. A pain I woudn't wish on anyone. Now I am HUGE into diet etc I have calculated each food I eat for 17 years to the point of th digestive processes. I am well above the average person in this regaurd. Leg press 540lbs. Married a first place body building competitor. As I look at what a successfull diet, as just one piece of the process, would consist of I myself am a bit overwhelmed. It means for the REST of my life (how ever long that is) I have to be dialed in. Now my old diet could work when going out but I have to say in order to do this 100% I would have to have my food everywhere I go. No more of so many of the funtions that socitey attributes to food. No convience of going out to eat (and I rarely do that). That is just a piece. And remember I ate healthy but that now looks like heaven to me. All my recipes out the window and I have kids so temptation will be around me and the feeling of being left out. Most of my food is wiped out and people thought it was boring before..lol As you mentioned the cost is huge and not obtainible for most. I have coverage and no alternatives are allowed. As a person who does both you see the benefits and until more people speak up it will remain unabtainble for most. Sad as it has helped many deal with the side effects of chemo as well.
For ME I can count down the year as I know there will be an end but it is forever with the alternative. I also have a high tollerance for pain, gave birth all naturally willingly..lol We all know dieting is hard as we are pumped with all these quick fixes to lose weight (not that weight is the issue) because so many are not succeeding to where they want to be. I think no matter what treatment you choose you have to believe in it and follow it 100%. So as I see myself who most are shocked at how crazy we diet I can't help but think it would not be a majority that can do this. I stuggled at the changes and yest cost had a lot to do with it too. I equate not doing it fully to taking 8 round sof chemo if 18 were recommended.
As I continue to state we should be able to share in this jouney and it shouldn't matter how we take it. What matters is that we are here in order to have this discussion. My choice in treatment is for me to make that is why I never asked WHAT to do. It was just so shocking that people got mad or got aggitated at others for the options they make and yes it is two sided as all arguements are. There was anger over statistics and if you truly want to make an educated decision you need to listen to all the data and see how there are many different interperatations.
Funny part is I never said chemo was NEVER an option for me but yet am bashed as if I did but what I do see is why I get private emails instead and don't blame them.
My other concern is you can't just read a piece from a news article that says take CQ10 (for example) run out and buy it and think that your doing the right thing. Each person should have a qualfied doctor to see what is best for their body which usually requires blood work. My biggest complaint with standard treatment is that all we are are stages and numbers but the human body is so very differnent. That is why we need this site as each BC patient has their own story and you hope to find one similar to you. Notice how many listings there are as BC is so complex not just stages. When we start looking at all the many differnent causes/responses we might make more progress. Both sides need to come together as we are fighting for the same thing.
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"When we start looking at all the many differnent causes/responses we might make more progress. Both sides need to come together as we are fighting for the same thing. "
....................and there you go.
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WOM, I truly don't think you are being bashed. I do think some of us have disagreed, strongly, with the idea of going only alt and have said so but I don;t believe anyone has said anything personal or insulting about you. If you don't agree with what some of us have said, thats your right, but it doesn't mean we've attacked you personally.
Though I did attack Ruth Heidrich for saying she cured herself of metastatic breast cancer. I have a son with an autism spectrum disorder and over the years I've developed a great distaste for people who peddle malarky on the internet. There's so much of it with autism.
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So I guess if somebody doesn't accept the conventional treatment evangelism they are following malarkey?
Let me know when there is no Stage IV forum for those who dutifully followed the conventional path. Then you have a case. Til then, not so much.
Thanks in advance.
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Ah - interesting - Member I am with you on the autism thing - and ADHD for that matter. When I hear that "elimination diets" will help, for example, I want to scream bloody murder. And,. sadly, that con artist who linked autism to vaccines (which study was published in The Lancet)has moved to Texas. Same goes with those peddling vitamins or blaming bad parenting or too much television. And major mental illness - oh, the tripe that is said there about supposed etiology and cures.... Let's just say that I have nothing but contempt for the scientologists.
But in all those cases, very differently from cancer, it is easy to show that what those people are saying is true bullshit (that is the nicest word I can come up with). It is demonstrable. It is easy to see how diet and television cannotbe linked to ADHD and autism outside of junk science (which, sadly, pollutes the airwaves). The conventional treatments, while far from perfect, do produce marked improvement in all but the most refractory or severe cases and there are hundreds and hundreds of well designed studies conducted over decades showing that a combination of interventions can truly turn a patient's life around. And, like cancer, these are diseases with no known cure and uncertain course.
In cancer, it is a different world, IMO. I'm also waiting for the end to that Stage IV forum for former chemo, hormonal and surgical patients who did everything the early stage protocols told them to. In fact, I don't think there is anyone who posts regularly in stage IV in BCO and who was diagnosed early stage who did NOT follow conventional treatment. They all did. Every single one of those sisters diagnosed initially at stages I, II or III took conventional treatment without hesitation.
By contrast, in mental illness and autism and ADHD the vast majority of people who receive properly delivered interventions find meaningful improvement. There really is evidence.
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I only said Ruth Heidrich is full of malarky. I don't believe she was ever stage IV. And I don't believe you an cure metastatic breast cancer with a vegan diet and running. I have a vested interest in believing her, yes, malarky as a vegetarian marathoner, but I don't and frankly I'll bet even most women following an alt approach don't either.
I love exercise and believe it has a place in every breast cancer patient's treatment program but, as I posted earlier, endurance athletes (myself included, and I am nowhere in her league) take it beyond the healthy point and can actually do damage to their immune systems.
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Yes, Athena, you are absolutely right. And in spite of the revelations of fraud in the vaccine "study" there are still very vocal supporters of that theory. What is frustrating is how far anti-science, alt approaches have permeated autism treatment. I can't tell you how many times I've been told to try this or that. Perhaps I'm overly sensitive, but that whole experience has given me a serious BS-meter.
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My BS meter could weed out crap in Mars at this point given what I have heard regarding my comorbidity.
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Though I don't post often, I enjoy reading this thread.
Athena- I am sitting here howling with laughter at your BS meter weeding out crap in Mars! Oh thank you for that! Just can't stop laughing!
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Athena....
Although this thread has gone beyond what was the original question, sry abt that. I just wanted to make a comment to athenas post...
Quite a few of the stage 4 ladies were diagnosed at stage 4 after their primary had gone undetected alot of them taking a healthy approach to life all of their life already!! Good diet, sensible exercise, yoga etc... By the time I was dx it was in my bones. I am doing well now, but have absolutely no doubt whatsoever no amount of alternative therapy would hv got me to this point after dx ie still alive and without some very aggressive conventional treatment and some very good docs I would be dead or very nearly... Very sad but true. Therefore alot of ladies went through the stages 1 2 and 3 whilst maintaining a very healthy lifestyle and still ended up stage 4, because they were never given the chance of traditional treatment..
On a lighter note, Athena when I need some cheering up i read ur posts your like an American version of Ricky gervais with a bee in his bonnet, the cyber bullies thread is an absolutely brilliant read, classic, it's up there with faulty towers!!! Nothing like a bit of controversy to get everyones brain cells in gear!!! Carry on the good work Xxxx0 -
Lol - always glad to entertain. I hate to say this, though, but sometimes I am dead serious! (Fawlty Towers was too....)
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I feel you wornoutmom. I agree with your post above. We all want a magic pill but that will never be. We have to take some responsibility for our health and not count on the drugs and the doctors to "save" us. With that comes a lifetime of changes. There's no going back to our old ways...ever...if we are to stay ahead of this disease. I struggle daily with my new lifestyle so I get what you're saying about it being hard to stick with over a lifetime. That's not to say that chemo is a cake walk by any means. An entire year of cancer treatment by anyone's standard is rough to say the least. I am very fortunate that I can afford my supplements, organic foods and uninsured visits to my naturalpath but I know there are those who can not. Insurance companies will pay more than a thousand dollars for a single treatment of chemo but not for products such as vitamin D (at least mine doesn't). This just doesn't make sense to me. Something needs to change.
I have read this thread with interest and sometimes frustration because the discussion went WAY off topic. No one (or not many) seemed to even pay attention to your initial post which was;
I am just curious if there are survivors out there who have chosen to refuse the suggested Chemo and radiation treatments.....I am hoping to hear from some others who may have done the alternative approach as after everything my MD's have put me through I fear going back.
If there is no one here that can answer this, then the thread would have ended a long time ago but instead the thread took on a different personality and became an argument over chemo stats and such. I, for one, can understand your frustration and why you might feel insulted so I just wanted to offer a little support.
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Thank you impositve needed that
We are way off track..lolThere have been quite a few posts in regards to the OP which is Me correct? Some that finally got my name that told me or referred to the OP (aslo me) saying how I had to think of my kids so how am I not to also see this as suggesting that I am not considering them. That somehow weighing all the options means I am not taking my kids into consideration which puts judgement on my parenting skills. Trust me my kids have given me the strength to look at all sides to make sure I FULLY understand my choice. One person went as far as to post how sad I made them and they couldn't even read my posts anymore. Wondering what warm and welcoming picture that would paint if it were about you? We are all entitiled to our opinions but it might have been a bit kinder and respectful to keep that one non PUBLIC as I kept my initial thoughts regarding that to myself out of kindness.
I watched a fight ensue statistics. If you truly want to use statisitcs you should be very dialed in on all the ways the same results can be twisted. I was shocked at how a simple extra word can totally mislead you and this is a TWO way street. My onc showed me how my treatments would give me and 85% chance and thought yipee. Then I studied and wow I had a lot to learn. One site said something like this. (will keep treatment out of it) US and the Soviet Union are the only two teams in the race and the SU wins. US reports that they won the silver medal and that the SU came in next to last. It is true... Makes you think. Say a study has 50 people and 2 dies add something natural or drug and then only 1 out of 50 die you can report it as it only cured one person or that there is a 50% increased survival...both are true. Instead of arguing listen to one another. I prefer to really understand where the statisics I am getting are coming from and how the wording is being used. If anything is to come of this rather than arguing maybe a light should go off saying hmmm lets look deeper and instead of asking for % rates lets get concrete #'s and define all the terms they are using, another cute little trick. If you look at only one side it will be very easy to be mislead in anything.
As with Ruth H it should be a wake up call. She is considered nuts or whatever clever you word you want to call it for attributing it to her diet. First let me say being a vegetarian and a vegan are very differnet and in vegetarianism there are different types. I would be a happy camper to just go vegetarian..lol Pasta is so darn comforting...grr To discredit her outrightly misses a very important factor that just might be the key to this whole thing. Cancer is only looked at as something to cure. We need to figure out why it happens to STOP it from coming. Secondly BC is not something that we are going to find one solution to. If that were the case there would not be so many factors..triple neg, triple +, family history no family history. And lastly we will never find ONE thing to cure its symptoms. Nor is there one cause . Why because each of us are DIFFERENT. My son is bipolar and he breaks out in hives from deprokote (sp), am I to say no one will benefit from this because he can't. It works very well for most. We all respond to meds differently but with breast cancer I have her2 so I get Herpicin. One lady I met went into toxic shock from one dose of chemo and can't take anymore. Does that mean all will do this and we should get rid of it NO. We need to understand what works for us may not work for all as human bodies just don't work like that. So before you jump in and say this is wrong you might want to think of how very differntly peoples bodies can respond to the same thing and how MANY factors are really involoved.
I would think it safe to say that for Ruth it worked no differnet from a chemo patient 27 years and going. Does it mean it will work for all NO. There are to many factors and as long as we accept that there is only ONE treatment many will die. Maybe some peoples stories sound crazy to us because it won't work in our case.
Not sure how Autism came in..Not to familar with Autism but I did meet a woman who had a son who swore gluten fee diet decreased his tantrums. I met her at a park she wasn't selling me anything . Who knows maybe the kid does have an allegy type of response and that might be why it worked. But that doesn't mean it will help all. Heck it may work in very few but why should the very few be afraid to try and risk missing help. But I certianly wasn't going to say you got sucked in by quakery. If she saw the reponse there must be something that worked for them. As only a person who is there every day would really know how the boy responded.
One thing I think we should start demanding they look into is testing tumors for chemo repsonse. There are places out there the have surpassed just chemo sensitivity and one thing they told me is you know what most of the time it isn't the main chemo mixtures that work. Why on earth are we not making sure with all the body differences that the chemo they are going to inject will be the best match for you????? 11 years ago my mom told her Md dr about VItamin D and he told her it would do nothing now my onc even tested my vitamin D. So I am sorry I am gonna ask the questions and research both sides . And I believe both sides have successes as well as failures.
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Hi worn out
Just wanted to say that whichever one you end up choosing, alternative or traditional, I wish you the best. I hope some at your stage and diagnosis will come forward to give you their experience. I certainly would not consider you a 'bad mother' if you felt the alternative route was best for you. That's just not so. Sometimes having a quality life is preferable over having a long and sickly life.
What I will say is that I hope you make the most of the next few years with your children. Hold them close, remember to laugh even through the worst of times, and say 'I love you' as often as you can remember.
Some at a later stage such as 3 will only have this one chance so the decision will be oh so very important. In most cases with these advanced stages there will be no 'do overs.' Weigh your options, make your decision, then don't look back. Regret is a waste of precious time.
By the way, I think OP means 'opening post.' It's not a derogatory term towards you. It just means they are refering to what you wrote in you initial post.
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wornoutmom I hope you are not looking at statistics like that. They are wrong. When my onc gave me the 84% alive/NED statistic for my case… it also said on the flip side 14% were not NED or not alive in 10 years. The other 2% died of other causes. That 2% was not included in the 84%.
I was actually given a bar chart with everything properly labeled.
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wornout- I had to chime in aboutyour meeting a woman in the park...I have no clinical backing but my son, who has autism, goes psychotic if he drinks too much milk. Docs all think I am nuts. I test it every few years and after a few days of milk- look out- swinging and ready to break stuff. The only clinical study of this hallucigentic <sp> effect of milk on some folks with autism was in England, where it was dismissed. Interestingly enough, one of the leading course of study in autism is now the enzymes in the gut and what is caused by the incorrect/irregular processing of certain substance. All I know, kid is not drinking milk. He does get some cheese in small doses, but milk he swigs-and if he has an orange every morning, his brain works better and is more vocal. How is that for science? Mom science.
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I understand that some kids with autism have leaky gut issues but it is by far the minority. Diet doesn't affect my son at all. But if you've figured this out for yours, good.
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Actually, Orange, Herceptin *does* raise your chances of non-recurrance by 50%, for those that are able to take it. It is not quite a miracle drug but damned close.
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Pamin - I guess I wasn't clear, the point I was trying to make is that a 50% reduction in risk of recurrence is not seen for most treatments. Hence when stated on the alt board that chemo doesn't buy you much, for most low grade tumors, this assertion is correct. Most treatments don't buy you 50% risk reduction. Weight control for premenopausal hormone positive buys you 20% risk reduction. But yes, Herceptin + chemo (not herceptin alone) decreases chance of recurrence by about 50% compared to chemo alone. As far as I know, it is the only treatment that works so well. For less than grade 3 BC, I think chemo buys you about 25% reduction in recurrence (someone please chime in if I have this wrong). On very aggressive tumors, such as Her 2+, chemo alone also approaches 50% reduction in risk compared to no chemo. Herceptin is more effective when given together at the same time as chemo than for herceptin + chemo given at different times. A couple studies have demonstrated this.
Anyway, it sounds as if wornoutmom has found an alt treatment that she expects to work well. Would you mind sharing? I am keeping my weight under control to reduce recurrence risk (20%) (along with the TCH (about 35%) I already did and the tamox (I am taking now). Anything else I can do with some data behind it, I am interested. Thanks so much.
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First that is a "relative risk" figure so it misrepresents the effectiveness. But more importantly, you are only looking at recurrence not overall survival. There was no statistically significant difference in overall survival in the Herceptin users. ( 1.3% isn't considered significant since it may be chance.)
Look at a summary snip from BCO's own explanation:
"More than 89% of the women who got adjuvant Herceptin were alive after 4 years, whether or not they had a recurrence (overall survival) compared to 87.7% of the women who didn't get adjuvant Herceptin.
This difference in overall survival wasn't significant, which means that it could have been due to chance and not because of the difference in treatment.
Women treated with Herceptin sometimes had serious side effects (called grade 3 or 4 adverse events), including:" (see article)
http://www.breastcancer.org/treatment/targeted_therapies/new_research/20110301.jsp
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Mathteacher - you (and BCO) are quoting from a trial that has been totally confounded.
""The overall survival benefit is no longer significant in intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis, probably because of the effect of trastuzumab and lapatinib (Tykerb) use post-relapse and trastuzumab use before recurrence in the observation group," they added."
The anaylysis you cited discusses the intent to treat analysis. Intent-to-treat means that all the patients that were signed up for the trial results are analyzed, and includes those who dropped out or crossed over to another treatment.
In the HERA trial, after the dramatic results of herceptin were reported in the first readout, the ones originally not assigned to the herceptin arm of the trial were allowed to cross over (receive herceptin). MOST of the patients crossed over. That means those that were originaly given placebo, had heceptin - just later than the patients in the original herceptin arm. So the intent to treat analysis compared those that get herceptin earlier, to those that go their herceptin later. It was only in this analysis that the difference between the herceptin group and the placebo group (that shortly became the later herceptin group) was not significantly different. The way it is written is very confusing and I had to read the original Lancet article to figure out what was being reported.
For a non-confounded study - that is results NOT totally muddled by crossover of the placebo patients to the herceptin group - see results of the BCIRG0006 trial. This trial was not confounded because patients were not allowed to cross over.
It bugs me that these results were reported without a better description of what was being compared.
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Some background on why intention-to-treat analysis are done:
Back in the bad old days trials would be done comparing treatment A to treatment B and only those that finished treatment were compared. So lets say at the end of the study treatment A had prevented cancer more often than treatment B. But lets say treatment A was very toxic, so many patients on treatment A dropped out of the study early due to toxicity or died from the treatment. In the old days A was said to be better treatment B because more patients that got treatment A did not have a recurrence compared to treatment B. But of course, this isn't exactly helpful information because treatment A actually produced worse outcomes overall than treatment B. This is what a lot of women who post frequently on the alt board justifiably complain about.
Intent to treat analysis is a way of trying to resolve the problem - to make sure there is no bias or confounding in favor of the treatment. Intent to treat analysis compares treatments in patients that EVER received it - even if they receive only one dose and then drop out. Even if they dropped out because they got hit by a truck - for the statistical analysis it is assumes that they received their full treatment, in whatever arm they were assigned to. This is to make sure the full effect of any side effects from the treatments are taken into account. Unfortunately, when there is significant cross over, as there was for the HERA trial, this will bias confound the analysis (ruin the possibility of a meaningful statistical analysis).
Because of the high proportion of placebo patients that crossed over to Herceptin, only the analysis that were done before cross-over occurred actually compare Herceptin treatment to no Herceptin treatment. .
Another interesting fact about the HERA trial... in this trial patients all received herceptin AFTER they completed chemo, not during chemo. Compared to trials when chemo and herceptin were given together, there was less improvement. The better activity of herceptin with chemo as opposed to herceptin after chemo was demonstrated in another trial. If anyone wants the specifics of that trial, let me know and I will look it up.
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member- not leaky gut- just several things particular to him-like anything guess. He is an odd one indeed,, but he is my odd one and I love him to pieces:)
So much of anyting, BC or autism or anything, in the end, has to come down to our own empirical data- you could tell me I am crazy for saying that one pill put me to my knees, that it was not the pill - that is could not be the pill-but that would be wrong. Just like pain thresholds, I would never presume to tell anyone that any particular thing was a breeze or horrendous, without qualifying it as MY experience. If I have learned anyting in 54 years living on this planet is that except for some commonalities, we are all very different beings indeed and we react very differently to most things. On a really basic level- I can eat three dozen shrimp and holler for more, if my husband has a nibble, he better get that benadryl or to the ER or he is not going to alive in a very short time. You could say that is a silly analogy as it is just a food allergy- but to me it really illustrates the situation. Going further- benadryl makes a large amout of people zonk out...whereas for me, I become a speed demon. One drug- two different effects. Advil makes me puke, while a tylonel works like a charm. The list goes on and these are just OTC (over-the-counter) meds....the more complex and the disparities get even hairier <sp> Some we have no choice but to use, others, reactions may far offset the help.
Hope everyone's sunday is good to them:)
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annetek - I think the shrimp is a very good analogy.
How about this for what seems like an Old Wive's tale that I was embarrased to relay to my onc but did so nonetheless. I had to stop taking Tamoxifen, and that was about six months ago. Yet still today, my body has changed so much as a result of the drug that my body temperature is still on high. If the temperature is above 36 Farenheit or so I do not need a coat and can wear a blouse. As a result, I have spent this last winter walking on the streets in lights sweaters sweating while burly, muscular men stroll by me clutching their scarves and wrapped in heavy coats.
How does one explain something like that? I used to be as cold as most women. At 36 F I would maybe not have to wear a scarf but that is all.
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One more thing to add about the article. Mathteacher quotes:
"Women treated with Herceptin sometimes had serious side effects (called grade 3 or 4 adverse events), including:"
If you check out the article it says:
" The most common grade 3-4 events -- each occurring in less than 1% of patients -- were congestive heart failure, hypertension, arthralgia, back pain, central-line infection, hot flashes, headache, and diarrhea."
Many of these SE (including CHF & hypertension) usually go away once treatment is stopped.
Drug companies are not going to pay for an expensive drug like Herceptin if there is insignificant results. Herceptin has made a huge difference in the survival of HER2+ patients. It's not a guarantee but I am so glad I'm getting this. I've heard stats from 25% to over 50%. I think it really depends on the case and stage too.
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Congestive heart failure from Herceptin is not reversible. Once the heart is damaged, it's damaged for good, unless the failure is caused by an underlying issue such as a blockage etc. Once Herceptin has restricted it's ability to pump, the damage is done.
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Gracie it is. Just do a search "congestive heart failure, reversible." My husband reversed his. He is not on any meds for his heart anymore just by losing weight, eating right and exercising everyday.
Also note that congestive heart failure happens mostly when herceptin is given with Adriamycin
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