John Stamos - Public Service Announcement
Conversations with your Doctor
To personalize your cancer treatment, tests can be performed on cells
taken from your tumor to determine the drug that will kill the cancer.
These tests, or chemosensitivity assays, provide you and your doctor
information to select the best choice of chemotherapy for your cancer.
However, they are not widely used, so your doctor may have some concerns.
You can use this pamphlet to start a conversation with your doctor about
using the EVA-PCD™ method to personalize your cancer treatment.
Feel free to download and print this document and take it with you when you visit the doctor.
Concern: The standard of care is clinically proven to be the best treatment for you.
Reality: Standards of care have the greatest likelihood of success for most people but are not specific to you and your cancer. By testing your cancer cells against potential chemotherapies before you begin therapy, you can increase your chances of finding the right therapy for you and increase your chances of success.
Concern: Chemosensitivity tests are not accurate and are not proven to work.
Reality: In a review of more than 500 published clinical cases, EVA-PCD was shown to be able to detect a chemotherapy’s ability to kill a cancer cell in 94% of the cases. The EVA-PCD tests determine what chemotherapies your tumor is sensitive and resistant to by measuring tumor cell-death. Older tests only looked for chemotherapies that stopped tumor cells from growing, which can only tell if a cancer cell will be resistant to a drug.
Concern: Your tumor cell responds to drugs differently in the body than in a laboratory.
Reality: This is true. For this reason, the EVA-PCD method keeps your tumor cells in clusters of cells, or microspheroids, that mimic the environment within the body. These clusters are then used to determine the response of your tumor cells to potential chemotherapies or combination of chemotherapies. This cluster environment is a significant advancement over earlier methods where tumor cells were grown individually and in isolation, and did not accurately reflect tumor response to drug treatments in the body.
Concern: You will lose valuable time in treating your cancer if you wait for the EVA-PCD results.
Reality: After we receive a sample of your tumor, it takes 7-10 days to run the tests and provide treatment recommendations. By knowing ahead of time which chemotherapies kill your tumor cells, you can save several months of valuable time in your fight against your cancer. You also avoid exposure to toxic, ineffective drugs, unnecessary side effects and acquired drug resistance that may be caused by a chemotherapy that didn’t work for you.
Concern: This test and the provided treatment recommendations are not reimbursed.
Reality: The EVA-PCD method screens your tumor sample against FDA-approved drugs that are reimbursed by most insurance companies. The EVA-PCD method is covered by a handful of payors, and we are currently broadening reimbursement. Alternative financing options are available. Please contact us to see if you qualify.
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