First-line protracted venous infusion fluorouracil with CisDDP or carboplatin in advanced colorectal cancer

A total of 55 patients with measurable colorectal metastatic carcinoma were studied to evaluate the impact on toxicity, response, and survival of protracted venous infusion (PVI) 5-FU 200 mg/m2 per day with Cis-DDP 80 mg/m2 or carboplatin 300 mg/m2 every 3 weeks, 1-hour infusion. Patients received continuous uninterrupted therapy until there were signs or symptoms of toxicity. Both 5-FU and cisplatin were withheld when patients experienced grade II stomatitis and diarrhea, severe nausea or vomiting not controlled by standard antiemetic therapy, and clinically significant hand-foot syndrome. The toxicity was neurological (20% grade 2 and 3) hematological (13% grade 2) and dermatological (11% grade 2). The overall response (CR+PR) was 24% with a median survival of 13 months. The results of our study show that there is no improvement in response rate, response duration or survival compared with historical trials. However, this study does confirm the valuable palliative role of the protracted 5-FU infusion treatment. Colorectal carcinoma is one of the most common neoplasms in Western societies, being second only to lung cancer as a cause of death from malignancy. The management of nonmetastatic primary disease in surgical, with adjuvant chemotherapy for those at high risk of relapse. However, for those with metastatic disease at diagnosis or recurrent disease after resection, cytotoxic chemotherapy is the treatment of choice and fluorouracil (5-FU) is the most active cytotoxic agent in this disease, with a response rate of approximately 20%. Efforts to improve the response rate have focused on the use of agents to modulate 5 FU. The Southwestern Oncology Group (SWOG) study reported by Leichman et al. (1) and a study from the United Kingdom by Hill et al. (2) compared conventional FU to modulated FU and found no improvement in response rate or survival. In the SWOG study, two different schedules of bolus FU and LV were compared with bolus FU alone and to continuous infusion FU administered alone or modulated by LV or PALA. In this study, the results obtained with bolus FU were superior to most of the studies in the literature: The response rate was 26%, and the median survival was 14 months. The high- and low-dose LV and FU groups showed response rates and survival similar to bolus FU alone. However, in 12 previously reported randomized studies comparing FU and LV or FU alone, nine reported that the combination of FU and LV produced significant increases in response rates and two reported significant increase in survival (3, 4). Many of these trials used the dose schedules reported in the SWOG trial. Protracted venous infusion (PVI) 5-FU has been shown to have superior efficacy with less toxicity in colorectal cancer when compared to bolus 5-FU and synergy between cisplatin and 5-FU has been demonstrated in vitro. Consequently, we have investigated the efficacy of the combination of bolus cis or carboplatin and PVI 5 FU in 55 patients with advanced colorectal cancer using survival, response rate, symptomatic response, and toxicity as study endpoints.