Phase II Study of Cisplatin with Irinotecan as Induction Chemotherapy Followed by Chemoradiotherapy for Unresectable Stage III Non-small Cell Lung Cancer
Anticancer Research, 07/27/2012
Clinical Article
Chang H et al. – This study failed to demonstrate a benefit for induction chemotherapy which was characterized by suboptimal antitumor activity and was poorly tolerated, with excess treatment–related toxicity.
Methods- Induction chemotherapy consisted of irinotecan i.v. and cisplatin i.v. and was administered on day 1 and day 8 of each cycle.
- Patients underwent two cycles of chemotherapy with a 3-week interval.
- In the absence of progressive disease, 66Gy radiation was administered concurrently with etoposide on days 1 to 5 and 29 to 33, as well as with cisplatin on day 1, 8, 29, and 36.
- Twenty patients were enrolled between July 2007 and December 2009.
- This study was closed prematurely due to lack of efficacy in induction chemotherapy.
- The overall response rate was 45% [95% confidence interval (CI), 25 to 65%], which did not meet the upper limit for first stage rejection of the treatment.
- The rates of 3-year progression-free survival and overall survival were 17.1% (95% CI, 0 to 36.8%) and 25% (95% CI, 0.2 to 49.8%), respectively.
- The primary toxicities included neutropenia, diarrhea and fatigue.
