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Vol.42 No.7 contents | Japanese/English |
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Validity of Postoperative Adjuvant Chemotherapy for Non-small Cell Lung Cancer
Pro: Fumihiro Tanaka1, Hiromi Wada11Department of Thoracic Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto University, Japan.
Objective. To assess the efficacy of postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy for completely resected pathologic (p-) stage IB-IIIA non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and to examine the validity in clinical practice. Methods. All the reported prospective randomized studies on postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy in more than 100 patients with resected NSCLC were reviewed. Results. Most chemotherapy regimens such as cisplatin-based intravenous chemotherapy regimens failed to improve the postoperative survival of patients with completely resected NSCLC. However, some prospective studies suggested that two oral drugs, UFT and ubenimex, could be effective as postoperative adjuvant therapy for resected NSCLC, whereas these two drugs showed minimal anti-tumor effect against advanced NSCLC. These results show that drugs that can be administrated for a long time after surgery, not drugs with potent anti-tumor activity, may be used postoperatively. Conclusion. It is clinically valid to perform postoperative adjuvant therapy using drugs that can be given with good compliance, such as UFT and ubenimex, whereas the efficacy has not been established.
key words: Non-small cell lung cancer, Postoperative adjuvant therapy, Chemotherapy, Response rate, Survival
JJLC 42 (7): 765-770, 2002
