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Colitis?
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Colitis?

› Forums › General Melanoma Community › Colitis?

  • Post
    • December 21, 2019 at 6:36 pm
    Tsvetochka
    Participant
      How is colitis usually diagnosed and treated?

      I have been getting Keytruda since June with very good results, but I have had diarrhea since September. At first it was just the first few days after each infusion, then the first week, now it’s pretty much all the time. My doctor keeps saying that she’s concerned about colitis, but she only switches me to different probiotics and says that she’s concerned.

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        • December 21, 2019 at 6:57 pm
        ed williams
        Participant
          Here is a link that talks about how Dr. Mario Sznol manages his patients at Yale. If you go to the 27:29 min mark he gets into how to handle things. One thing to keep in mind is frequency, there is a rubric for immunotherapy Immune related adverse events for diarrhea and based on how often you are getting diarrhea they grade you. For example when diarrhea hit for me I was having up to 10 or 11 trips to the bathroom for two days straight so that was it for me getting any more Nivo (considered a grade 3 reaction) and started steroids (prednisone) at .5mg/kg, some people might start on higher dose levels and some need to get IV versus pills for better absorption, every case is kind of different from amount to pace of tapper (lowering of dose). The video might require you to join research to practice, no spam shit afterwards and gives you access to pretty good video’s from leading melanoma experts like Mario Sznol. http://www.researchtopractice.com/DOU119/Video/1?playlistIndex=2#t=27m23s
            • December 21, 2019 at 7:22 pm
            ed williams
            Participant
              This link is from ASCO standards for oncologists to follow and if you scroll down to 2.0 GI toxicities it goes into detail of how to manage and how to grade the diarrhea, if you click on table 2 it will show how they establish the grade of diarrhea. https://ascopubs.org/doi/full/10.1200/JCO.2017.77.6385
            • December 22, 2019 at 12:06 am
            Bubbles
            Participant
              Ed gave you some good info. There is also an algorithm in this post – along with a link to the actual material – that addresses how the experts suggest you deal with side effects and GI symptoms are outlined in particular: http://chaoticallypreciselifeloveandmelanoma.blogspot.com/2016/07/excellent-pdf-on-how-to-deal-with.html

              Hope you get some relief soon. celeste

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