[Effectiveness of chemotherapy for outpatients with gastric or colorectal cancer]

We retrospectively evaluated the efficacy of chemotherapy regarding symptom control, toxicity and discharge rate in 39 patients with gastric or colorectal cancer. Treatment consisted of TS-1 (n = 16), TS-1 + CPT-11 (n = 8), CDDP + CPT-11 (n = 5), paclitaxel (n = 8) and MTX + 5-FU (n = 4) for gastric cancer and 5-FU + l-leucovirin (n = 6), 5-FU + CPT-11 (n = 5), MMC + CPT-11 (n = 8) and 5-FU protracted continuous infusion (n = 5) for colorectal cancer. The rates of symptom improvement were the following: pain 60% (10/15), general fatigue 56% (5/9) and abdominal fullness 53% (8/15). 87% (34/39) of the patients were discharged from hospital and continued chemotherapy as outpatients grade 3 toxicities were the following: anemia 10.3%, nausea and/or vomiting 7.7%, diarrhea 5.1%. There was no treatment related death. The rates of outpatient based treatment duration improvement were the following: gastric cancer: 47.6%, colorectal cancer: 72%. These data suggest that these treatments for gastric and colorectal cancer are safe and improve the patients' QOL.