Published in:
01-05-2017 | Original Article
Conversion therapy for inoperable advanced gastric cancer patients by docetaxel, cisplatin, and S-1 (DCS) chemotherapy: a multi-institutional retrospective study
Published in: Gastric Cancer | Issue 3/2017
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Background
Conversion therapy is an option for unresectable metastatic gastric cancer when distant metastases are controlled by chemotherapy; however, the feasibility and efficacy remain unclear. This study aimed to assess the feasibility and efficacy of conversion therapy in patients with initially unresectable gastric cancer treated with docetaxel, cisplatin, and S-1 (DCS) chemotherapy by evaluating clinical outcomes.
Methods
One hundred unresectable metastatic gastric cancer patients, enrolled in three DCS chemotherapy clinical trials, were retrospectively evaluated. The patients received oral S-1 (40 mg/m2 b.i.d.) on days 1–14 and intravenous cisplatin (60 mg/m2) and docetaxel (50–60 mg/m2) on day 8 every 3 weeks. Conversion therapy was defined when the patients could undergo R0 resection post-DCS chemotherapy and were able to tolerate curative surgery.
Results
Conversion therapy was achieved in 33/100 patients, with no perioperative mortality. Twenty-eight of the 33 patients (84.8 %) achieved R0 resection, and 78.8 % were defined as histological chemotherapeutic responders. The median overall survival (OS) of patients who underwent conversion therapy was 47.8 months (95 % CI 28.0–88.5 months). Patients who underwent R0 resection had significantly longer OS than those who underwent R1 and R2 resections (P = 0.0002). Of the patients with primarily unresectable metastases, 10 % lived >5 years. Among patients who underwent conversion therapy, multivariate analysis showed that the pathological response was a significant independent predictor for OS.
Conclusions
DCS safely induced a high conversion rate, with very high R0 and pathological response rates, and was associated with a good prognosis; these findings warrant further prospective investigations.