Maintenance Chemo

Hi Lisa

Can you please clarify what you mean by maintenance chemo?

I’ve seen two uses of this term.

1. Chemo done after surgery. The proper medical term for this kind of chemo is Adjuvant chemo. Consolidation chemo is another term for the same thing.

Adjuvant/Consolidation chemo is usually recommended when the surgery results in positive margins or/and positive lymph nodes. That said, some patients receive recommendation to do adjuvant chemo even though their surgery is clean.

2. Maintenance chemo can also mean a long, continuous chemo prescribed to patients in remission. You can read more about it in this New York Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/health/21canc.html?pagewanted=all

CC doesn’t have an established maintenance chemo protocol. I’ve never heard of CC patients doing maintenance chemo. I’m not sure why. My guess is, most CC chemo protocols are too toxic to do on a continuous basis. Another reason (mentioned by Marion) is lack of clinical trials to prove that maintenance chemo is of benefit to CC patients.