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Platinum-based chemotherapy with or without thoracic radiation therapy in patients with unresectable thymic carcinoma
Y Nakamura1, H Kunitoh, K Kubota
1Thoracic Oncology Division, National Cancer Center Hospital, Tokyo, Japan. nmmc2@bronze.ocn.ne.jp
Background:
Thymic carcinoma is a rare mediastinal neoplasm with poor prognosis. Although the clinical benefit of chemotherapy for thymic carcinoma is controversial, cisplatin-based chemotherapy with or without radiation therapy is ordinarily adopted in advanced cases. We evaluated the clinical outcome of platinum-based chemotherapy with or without radiation therapy in unresectable thymic carcinoma patients.
Methods:
Ten patients with unresectable thymic carcinoma were treated with platinum-based chemotherapy with or without radiation therapy in the National Cancer Center Hospital between 1989 and 1998. We reviewed the histological type, treatment, response and survival of these patients.
Results:
Four of the 10 patients responded to chemotherapy and both the median progression-free survival period and the median response duration were 6.0 months. The median survival time was 11.0 months. There was no relationship between histological classification and prognosis.
Conclusions:
Platinum-based chemotherapy with or without thoracic radiation is, regardless of tumor histology, marginally effective in advanced thymic carcinoma patients, giving only a modest tumor response rate and short response duration and survival.