Department of Internal Medicine, Chungbuk National University College of Medicine, Cheongju, Korea.
ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: Although adjuvant chemotherapy after resection of gastric cancer is a popular practice in Korea, there are still controversies about the effectiveness of the treatment. The fact that the relatively less effective drugs have been used and the rarity of large-scaled controlled studies may be partially responsible for the controversies.
FP(5-FU, Cisplatin) combination is one of the most active regimen against advanced gastric cancer, consistently showing a response rate of 50~60%. We tried the FP chemotherapy as an adjuvant treatment for high-risk patients after curative resection of gastric cancer.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: Between February 1992 and June 1996, 35 patients with completely resected high-risk gastric cancer(postoperative stage III or IV except thase with M1) received six courses of FP chemotherapy. Endpoints were toxicities of treatment, relapse free survival, and overall survival.
RESULTS: With a median follow-up time of 17.1 months, Kaplan-Meier estimates of 2-year overall survival was 63.3% and relapse free survival estimates was 49%. There were no differences between stage III and IV patients in terms of overall survival or relapse free survival. Hematologic and non-hematologic toxicities were tolerable for most of the patients.
CONCLUSION: Postoperative FP combination chemotherapy was tolerable for patients with high-risk(stage III and IV) gastric cancer. It is too early to determine the long term survival rates for this patients, but 2-year overall and relapse free survival were comparable to that of historical non-cisplatin containing regimens. Randomized phase III studies are warranted.
PDF Links
Full text via DOI 
Download Citation 
