[Long-term survival following chemotherapy for recurrent head and neck cancer: patient characteristics]

Eighty-one patients with recurrent squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (60 patients) or undifferentiated carcinoma of the nasopharyngeal type (21 patients) were treated with cisplatin (80-100 mg/m2iv d1) and 5-fluorouracil (750-1000 mg/m2Cl d1-5). In squamous cell carcinoma patients there were 7 complete responses (11.6%), 25 partial responses (41.7%), 20 stable disease situations (33.3%) and 8 progressions (13.3%). In nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients there were 6 complete responses (28.6%), 9 partial responses (42.8%), 3 stable disease situations (14.3%) and 3 progression (14.3%). There were 5/60 patients (8.3%) with disease-free survival > 18 months in the squamous cell carcinoma group and 2/21 (9%) in the nasopharyngeal carcinoma group. All long-term survival patients had the following characteristics: good performance status (0-1 ECOG scale), disease- free interval from the first treatment > 12 months, local non-bulky relapse (rT1-2). A re-irradiation with palliative doses (20-48 Gy) was conducted in 3/7 patients. This treatment may have improved the response to drugs with regard to length and quality.