Usefulness of induction chemotherapy followed by definitive chemoradiotherapy for oropharyngeal cancer: implications for the selection of candidates for organ-preserving treatment based on the response to induction chemotherapy
Keywords:
induction chemotherapy, oropharyngeal cancer, chemoselectionAbstract
Background and aim of the work: This study aims to evaluate the usefulness of the response to induction chemotherapy (IC) in selecting candidates for definitive concurrent chemoradiotherapy in oropharyngeal cancer. Methods: Thirty-nine patients with oropharyngeal cancer received IC followed by definitive chemoradiotherapy or radiotherapy. The predominant IC regimens involved cisplatin and 5-fluorouracil with or without docetaxel. Patients who responded to IC received definitive organ-preserving treatment. Surgery was considered for patients who did not respond to IC. Only patients who underwent definitive radiotherapy were analyzed in this study. The associations between clinical parameters and local control (LC) or overall survival (OS) were also analyzed. Results: The follow-up periods of the surviving patients ranged from 9-170 months (median, 40). The 5-year LC and OS rates for all 39 patients were 81% and 60%, respectively. The 5-year LC and OS rates of the IC responders, complete response or partial response (CR, PR) were 89% and 65%, respectively, whereas those of the non-responders, stable disease or progressive disease (SD, PD) were 34% and 38%, respectively. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that the response to IC (p=0.00) and T-category (T1, 2 vs. T3, 4) (p=0.03) were correlated with LC, but only the response to IC was correlated with OS (p=0.04). None of the patients suffered severe late complications. Conclusions: Chemoselection appears to aid the selection of optimal treatments for patients with oropharyngeal cancer.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
OPEN ACCESS
All the articles of the European Journal of Oncology and Environmental Health are published with open access under the CC-BY Creative Commons attribution license (the current version is CC-BY, version 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This means that the author(s) retain copyright, but the content is free to download, distribute and adapt for commercial or non-commercial purposes, given appropriate attribution to the original article.
The articles in the previous edition of the Journal (European Journal of Oncology) are made available online with open access under the CC-BY Creative Commons attribution license (the current version is CC-BY, version 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Upon submission, author(s) grant the Journal the license to publish their original unpublished work within one year, and the non exclusive right to display, store, copy and reuse the content. The CC-BY Creative Commons attribution license enables anyone to use the publication freely, given appropriate attribution to the author(s) and citing the Journal as the original publisher. The CC-BY Creative Commons attribution license does not apply to third-party materials that display a copyright notice to prohibit copying. Unless the third-party content is also subject to a CC-BY Creative Commons attribution license, or an equally permissive license, the author(s) must comply with any third-party copyright notices.