The dangers associated with taking a Gleevec break

[Guest guest]

Hi Everyone,

I've been debating whether or not to post this because I don't want

to scare anyone unnecessarily. The last thing I want to do is scare

people, especially those who are already a little worried but I do

want to emphasize how important it is to have a doctor that knows

their stuff and how important it is to understand the risks involved

in the decisions we take.

There have been lots of people who have taken Gleevec breaks. Some

of these people had no choice but to take a break because they either

had very low counts or some other issue that warranted the temporary

break. There have also been people who have taken voluntary breaks

which were against their doctors advice.

For most of the people that have taken breaks, there haven't been any

negative repercussions and I want to stress that, especially for

those who had little or no choice when taking their break however I

do want to mention that there are risks involved in taking breaks

which is why many doctors are now using blood cell boosters to raise

low counts when possible which avoids some of the risks that a

Gleevec break can cause.

I have an abstract

( http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-

bin/abstract/109084458/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1 & SRETRY=0 ) that shows how

two patients went into blast crisis after taking a 2 week break from

Gleevec which demonstrates the risk pretty strongly I would say but

again, I'm not posting this to scare anyone, just to inform you that

there are options and there are risks with everything we do.

Take care,

Tracey

dx Jan 2002