BMC Cancer Research article Docetaxel weekly regimen in conjunction with RF hyperthermia for pretreated locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer: a preliminary study Zhu Jiang*1, Wang Yan2, Jiang Ming1 and Yang Yu1 BioMed Central Open Access Address: 1Cancer Center of West China (Hua Xi) Hospital, Si Chuan University, Guo Xue Street, City of Cheng Du, Si Chuan, 610041, China and 2West China 2nd University Hospital, Si Chuan University, Ren Min Nan Road, City of Cheng Du, Si Chuan, 610041, China Email: Zhu Jiang* - zhujiang1@medmail.com.cn; Wang Yan - while678@sina.com; Jiang Ming - mingminyu@gmail.com; Yang Yu - yangyuflying@hotmail.com * Corresponding author Published: 6 October 2007 BMC Cancer 2007, 7:189 doi:10.1186/1471-2407-7-189 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/7/189 Received: 20 May 2007 Accepted: 6 October 2007 © 2007 Jiang et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: To evaluate the feasibility and therapeutic effect of chemotherapy combined with regional radio frequency hyperthermia for pretreated locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer. Methods: 29 patients with stage III non-small cell lung cancer were enrolled in present study, received chemotherapy up to 4 cycles and radio frequency hyperthermia up to 32 times. The primary end points were grade 3,4 hematological or non-hematological toxicities and progression free survival, the secondary end points were response rate, tumor control rate and overall survival. Method of Kaplan-Meier was used for the survival analysis. Results: 21 patients completed their arranged treatments. The most common grade 3,4 toxicity was neutropenia (24.1%). Median progression free survival was 4 months (range 0–13 months), one year progression free survival rate was 10.3%. Overall response rate was 25.9%, tumor control rate was 66.6%. Median overall survival was 11 months (range 2–18+ months), one year overall survival rate was 44.8%. Conclusion: Treatment of chemotherapy in conjunction with regional hyperthermia was safe and well tolerant, it suggested an impressive tumor control rate and an acceptable one year progression free survival. Further study might be needed. Background Non-small cell lung cancer accounts for at least 80% of all lung neoplasma, and about 35% of these patients present with locally advanced unresectable disease [1]. Systemic chemotherapy with the platinum-containing regimens plus concurrent regional radiation is generally accepted as the standard first-line treatment for inoperable locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer, meta-analysis con- firmed the response and survival benefits, but the large number of patients will experience disease progression or tumor relapse [2-6]. For patients with a good performance status, second-line chemotherapy is recommended. Sev- eral third-generation chemotherapeutic agents had been evaluated in the second line setting, docetaxel maybe the most extensively studied one [7-10]. Recent studies indi- cated that second-line chemotherapy with docetaxel weekly as a single-agent regimen for pretreated non-small cell lung cancer was well tolerant and had an acceptable Page 1 of 5 (page number not for citation purposes)