Adjuvant 5-FU and MeCCNU improves survival following curative gastrectomy for adenocarcinoma

During the 13-year period ending December 31, 1984, 51 patients treated by curative gastrectomy for gastric adenocarcinoma invasive beyond the submucosa were eligible to enter adjuvant chemotherapy trials. Twenty-one of 22 patients in the first treatment group (FMe) received 5-fluorouracil and a nitrosourea. The second group of eight patients received the same drugs plus Adriamycin (FAMe). Twenty-one patients were observed as surgical controls. Each adjuvant treatment group was subdivided into groups of patients with zero to four or five or more lymph node metastases for survival analysis. Fifteen patients were alive without evidence of disease at five years. Analysis of variance of survival times showed that lymph node status (P = 0.0001) and adjuvant chemotherapy (P = 0.01) were statistically significant prognostic variables. The FMe group had the best survival. A Fisher's exact test showed that the FMe group had a greater proportion of five-year survivors (P = 0.0217) than the no treatment arm. Patients with only zero to four positive lymph nodes in the FMe group had a statistically greater number of five-year survivors than patients in the no treatment arm (P = 0.0155). In this series, postoperative 5-fluorouracil and MeCCNU significantly improved the survival times of patients after curative gastrectomy for adenocarcinoma as compared with surgical controls.