[Adjuvant chemotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer]

Surgery is the first choice for patients in the early stage of non-small cell lung cancer (NSC-LC). But, even for pathologic stage I patients, the post-operative survival remains unsatisfactory; the five-year survival rate is around 70 percent, in spite of potential curative resections. Therefore, post-operative adjuvant chemotherapy is considered to be necessary to improve the survival. Although many prospective randomized studies of post-operative adjuvant chemotherapy have been conducted, the efficacy of post-operative chemotherapy for NSCLC has not been proved (a consensus report of post-operative adjuvant treatment for NSCLC, 3rd IASLC Workshop, Bruges, August 1993). It has been recently reported by the West Japan Study Group for Lung Cancer Surgery (WJSG) that oral administration of UFT (a mixture of tegafur and uracil) as a post-operative adjuvant chemotherapy is effective for patients with complete resected NSCLC (stage I to III) and that UFT administration is tolerable with mild adverse effects in most patients. In order to improve postoperative survival of patients with more advanced stage NSCLC (e.g., bulky N2, III b), we has introduced biochemical modulation therapy using 5-FU, UFT combined with CDDP.