[Current status of chemotherapy of advanced gastrointestinal tumors]

In general, progress of chemotherapy for advanced gastrointestinal tumors has been slow, however, introduction of cisplatin has improved the results of chemotherapy in esophageal cancer. Cisplatin has been also recognized to be active for gastric cancer and study of combinations containing it is underway. Adriamycin appears to be the most active for hepatoma and 5-fluorouracil for pancreatic and colorectal cancers. Thus, combinations containing these drugs have been extensively studied but none has shown a definitive superiority over single agent efficacy of both drugs.