I'm a Chinese and my mother has cervical small cell cancer, can anyone help me? Even some treatment suggestions

Cervical small cell neuroendocrine carcinoma TNM stage 3 Total hysterectomy was performed on January 28, 2022, biopsy showed the presence of distant lymph nodes and other parts, the second chemotherapy was performed on March 7, progressed, chemotherapy was abandoned, and related clinical trials were found I am currently participating in a clinical trial in Beijing Cancer Hospital, and I don’t know if the clinical trial will be beneficial to my mother. Hope to get your valuable treatment advice, thank you very much!

Hi Dave and welcome - it must be very hard to see you mother going through this time. In the UK a Stage 3 cancer (using the FIGO measurement - not sure what it used in China) would not be treated with hysterectomy because of the presence of cancer in lymph nodes. The treatment would be systemic - whole body - and involve 5 weeks of chemotherapy once a week, 25-28 rounds of radiotherapy (5 days a week) and internal radiation called brachytherapy. I don’t know what the system is in China, but here there are always scans to check for spread before choosing a treatment plan, and it’s always the hospital that choose the treatment, not the patient. If a lady were to have a hysterectomy, like your mum, but residual cancer be found then the same ‘chemorads’ of chemo and radiotherapy would be employed.

You’ve said your mum had 2 sessions of chemo but stopped. Do you know why this was? Is there a reason why they are not treating with radiotherapy? What prognosis have they given her? Small cell cancer is rare here as it is there, I presume, and I believe aggressive, so all steps should be taken for full treatment unless there are contraindications relating to the patient’s general health.

I do hope something can be arranged to treat your mother effectively.

Hi Dave

I have little knowledge and no experience of small cell carcinoma. Just thought I’d mention you might find some relevant information or link up with someone with a similar diagnosis to your mother by searching on ‘small cell’ - top right (on my PC screen).

I hope all goes well for your mother.

x

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Hi, I had small cell and it was stage 3. It is treated differently to the other types due to it being more aggressive so if surgery isn’t an option which I’m surprised at stage 3 your mum had a hysterectomy but here and myself had 4 cycles of chemo usually cisplatin or carboplatin day 1 then day 2& 3 is etoposide, one cycle is every 3 weeks so you do the 3 days then off then it starts again after the 3 weeks. I then had 25 external (some have the lower dose chemo with rads I didn’t) then 2 x18 hour sessions of bracytherapy finished with 2 more cycles of the chemos. All in all it was 6 months worth of treatment. Small cell treatment is extremely intense but do able! I managed it whilst looking after a very energetic 3 year old! I started on 21st June 21 and my last chemo on Christmas Day 21 and on the 31st March 22 after my 3 month scans I got told I was NED and cancer free! I was at The Christie in Manchester and this tends to be the given treatment for small cell in the uk. I hope this helps x

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After reading your news, I’m so happy for you to be battling small cell carcinoma for 6 months. You are a very very brave and strong lady. Our regimen is also etoposide and cisplatin. However, it showed that the cancer cells at the bone metastases increased. We went to Beijing to participate in the clinical trial, but unfortunately the enrollment failed because the sodium in the body did not reach the standard. So we now have to reconsider the use of etoposide and carboplatin for chemotherapy and local pelvic radiation. I love my mother very much, and I believe you love your children very much. Thank you for your treatment advice. Have you been using etoposide and cisplatin before?

Thank you very much for your suggestion, my English is not very good, most of us use google translation, but we have not given up our desire for tomorrow, life is beautiful, we all want to grasp every day

First of all thank you for your reply, it’s been a bit busy these two days. First of all, the situation is like this. At the beginning, because the hospital did not do enough inspections, the inspection results showed I2b stage, and then the hospital suggested to arrange surgery for complete resection and biopsy, but found lymphoma metastasis and bone metastasis. After two chemotherapy treatments, the bone metastases and cancer cells increased, so we were very afraid at the time, so we went to look for relevant clinical trials, but unfortunately the experimental team informed us yesterday that the enrollment failed because the sodium chloride was too low. We have no choice but to reconsider chemotherapy and pelvic radiation. I wonder if your country has a better treatment plan for small cell cervical cancer

Hi Dave

I speak both Chinese and English fluently, if anyone you know need translation please let me know,I can definitely help on that.