Cisplatin-Based Doublet May Improve Survival in Relapsed Lung Cancer

Docetaxel plus cisplatin improved overall survival in patients with resected non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) relapsing after preoperative, adjuvant, or perioperative platinum-based chemotherapy, a recent study published online ahead of print in the journal Lung Cancer has shown.

For the study, researchers enrolled 88 patients with relapsed NSCLC and randomly assigned them to receive docetaxel plus cisplatin/carboplatin (Arm A) or docetaxel alone (Arm B).

The study was stopped early due to slow accrual.

Results showed that median progression-free survival was 8.0 months (95% CI: 5.3, 10.4) for Arm A compared with 5.6 months (95% CI: 4.0, 7.3) for Arm B (HR = 0.71; 95% CI: 045, 1.1; P=0.15).

Researchers found that median overall survival was 16.0 months (95% CI: 10.1, 23.9) and 12.4 months (95% CI: 8.22, 19.6) for Arm A and Arm B, respectively.

The study also demonstrated that a time to recurrence 12 months or more (P=0.02) and non-squamous histology (P=0.02) were associated with improved overall survival.

Although the addition of a platinum to docetaxel failed to improve progression-free survival, the authors note that the overall survival improvement is encouraging and warrants further investigation.

Reference

1. Moro-Sibilot D, Audigier-Valette C, Merle P, et al. Non-small cell lung cancer recurrence following surgery and perioperative chemotherapy: comparison of two chemotherapy regimens (IFCT-0702: a randomized phase 3 final results study). Lung Cancer. 2015. [Epub ahead of print]. doi: 10.1016/j.lungcan.2015.05.016.