Hi, I've posted here just a couple of times for my dad. He has stage IV mel. – lung mets, and a couple tumors in his head and neck area. This past week he has been at Vanderbilt getting ready to start the GSK Braf/Mek combo trial and passed all the screenings until they did a cat scan of his brain and found 2 small brain mets. So now he's not eligible for this trial-talk about a major let down-we were all so excited he was going to start this medicine. But Vandy does have the GSK Braf trial for brain mets and they are now trying to get him into this. Is this the way to go or should he do gamma knife?? The brain mets have thrown a huge curve ball in everything because I thought I was up on my melanoma research but haven't looked into what's best for brain mets.
My parents are still at Vandy waiting to here if my dad can get into this new trial (they live 12 hours away). He's had radiation before for tumors in his head/neck area and it didn't work and he lost all of his hair in that area and still has big issues with dry mouth and not tasting things well. So radiation isn't something my parents want to do again because it was a bunch of pain and trouble for nothing. Is Gamma knife the same?? Any thoughts on this braf trial for brain mets? I know it's new and has had some success but with only a small number of patients. Also, anyone else have experience at Vandy? So far my parents love it (doctors, staff just impressed in general), just wish they could start a trial.
Thanks for any input you can give me. I feel we really need to so something fast with this small brain mets!
Adrienne
