Adjuvant FAM2 in resectable gastric cancer

In spite of the improvements in surgical techniques and intensive care, no important benefit in the prognosis of patients with gastric carcinoma has been attained in the last twenty years. Different adjuvant treatment protocols have been proposed in an attempt to improve upon the results obtained with surgery only. In western countries, the FAM chemotherapeutic regimen is one on the most widely used for the treatment of advanced gastric carcinoma. In 1982 the G.I. GROUP of the EORTC proposed a modification (FAM2) to the original FAM as an adjuvant treatment in a controlled clinical study for gastric carcinoma. It is still too early to determine any therapeutic advantages of FAM2 in this protocol. Although the FAM2 regimen is fairly well tolerated, there is some toxicity which, however, seems to be slightly higher than in the regular FAM. It remains to be seen if this is a reasonable price to pay for still unknown therapeutic advantages. In view of the scarcity of available data in this field and the conflicting results which have emerged so far, the results of our study are awaited with great interest.