[Polychemotherapy for advanced epidermoid cell lung cancer (author's transl)]

The long-term results are presented of cytostatic treatment with a combination of adriamycin + methotrexate + vincristine + trofosfamide in 45 patients with advanced inoperable epidermoid cell lung cancer. The overall response rate (complete + partial remission) was 13/45 = 29%; the survival time from the beginning of therapy ranged from 12 to more than 1023 days, with a median of 166 days. Three patients are still alive. The group with non-keratinising epidermoid cell cancer showed a significantly longer survival time than the group with keratinising tumours. Therapy was accompanied by side effects in all patients, whereby the intensity of side effects was inversely correlated with the clinical outcome of therapy. An analysis of the individual response of patients revealed a positive effect of therapy in 19 patients (very good in 13 and good in 6) whereas a negative effect was found in 12 patients (very poor in 10 cases); in 14 cases the effect was questionable. The overall poor results of cytostatic therapy in epidermoid cell lung cancer so far are pointed out and, on the basis of the presented data, its implementation routinely outside oncogenic centres does not appear to be warranted.