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What Does a Partial Response Mean?
Partial response (PR) implies that further treatment will probably be required to attempt a cure. In some slow-growing tumors (including low-gradelymphomas) no further treatment may be immediately necessary until the disease starts increasing in size again.
Understanding Terms Describing Cancer Treatment
There are so many terms used to describe cancer treatment that it gets terribly confusing. Thankfully many of these means about the same thing. Some of these include:
Making Plans After a Partial Response
As noted above, what happens after a partial response is largely dependent upon the type of cancer you have. For the same reason, a partial response could be particularly good or particularly bad. It all depends not only on your specific cancer but on the molecular profile of your specific cancer. If you are searching for information on your cancer keep this in mind.
Numbers and statistics online do not take into account the tremendous variations between people, even those with the same type of cancer. In addition, what you read online will often refer to statistics. Statistics reflect averages from studies of large groups; very few people are “average.”
And statistics are put together using data from how people with your cancer responded in the past to treatment. These numbers do not take into account any new treatments since the time the data was recorded, so they may not be relevant to you.
Recurrence of Leukemia or Lymphoma
We are talking about the partial response, but in the back of many of our minds is the fear of recurrence. How can you cope with thefear of recurrenceor the fear of progression? What happens when leukemia or lymphoma recur?
Many people find it helpful to talk about the elephant in the room. Open up and expose these fears. Sometimes talking to a counselor is helpful if you catch yourself worrying. Thankfully we live at a time when survival rates for many cancers are improving, and new treatments are being approved more rapidly than ever.
Clinical trials are in progress not only for treatments we hope will improve survival but for treatments with fewer side effects than in the past.
1 SourceVerywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Younes A, Hilden P, Coiffier B, et al.International Working Group consensus response evaluation criteria in lymphoma (RECIL 2017).Ann Oncol. 2017;28(7):1436-1447. doi:10.1093/annonc/mdx097
1 Source
Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Younes A, Hilden P, Coiffier B, et al.International Working Group consensus response evaluation criteria in lymphoma (RECIL 2017).Ann Oncol. 2017;28(7):1436-1447. doi:10.1093/annonc/mdx097
Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
Younes A, Hilden P, Coiffier B, et al.International Working Group consensus response evaluation criteria in lymphoma (RECIL 2017).Ann Oncol. 2017;28(7):1436-1447. doi:10.1093/annonc/mdx097
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