This review shows that a significant proportion of patients in curative-intent clinical trials experience toxicities that result in dose modifications-dose reduction , dose delays or missed doses-despite strict selection criteria and intense monitoring .
Toxicities of systemic cancer therapies are often less frequently observed in clinical trials than in clinical practice , due to the careful selection of patients with fewer comorbidities .
Although guidelines exist for the estimation of chemotherapy dose , clinical factors like age , comorbid illness and extremes of body habitus are not considered in the method of dose calculation , which can result in significant toxicity .
Capecitabine as adjuvant treatment for stage III colon cancer.
BACKGROUND Intravenous bolus fluorouracil plus leucovorin is the st and ard adjuvant treatment for colon cancer . The oral fluoropyrimidine capecitabine is an established alternative to bolus fluorouracil plus leucovorin as first-line treatment for metastatic colorectal cancer . We evaluated capecitabine in the adjuvant setting . METHODS We r and omly assigned a total of 1987 patients with resected stage III colon cancer to receive either oral capecitabine ( 1004 patients ) or bolus fluorouracil plus leucovorin ( Mayo Clinic regimen ; 983 patients ) over a period of 24 weeks . The primary efficacy end point was at least equivalence in disease-free survival ; the primary safety end point was the incidence of grade 3 or 4 toxic effects due to fluoropyrimidines . RESULTS Disease-free survival in the capecitabine group was at least equivalent to that in the fluorouracil-plus-leucovorin group ( in the intention-to-treat analysis , P<0.001 for the comparison of the upper limit of the hazard ratio with the noninferiority margin of 1.20 ) . Capecitabine improved relapse-free survival ( hazard ratio , 0.86 ; 95 percent confidence interval , 0.74 to 0.99 ; P=0.04 ) and was associated with significantly fewer adverse events than fluorouracil plus leucovorin ( P<0.001 ) . CONCLUSIONS Oral capecitabine is an effective alternative to intravenous fluorouracil plus leucovorin in the adjuvant treatment of colon cancer
This review shows that a significant proportion of patients in curative-intent clinical trials experience toxicities that result in dose modifications-dose reduction , dose delays or missed doses-despite strict selection criteria and intense monitoring .
Toxicities of systemic cancer therapies are often less frequently observed in clinical trials than in clinical practice , due to the careful selection of patients with fewer comorbidities .
Although guidelines exist for the estimation of chemotherapy dose , clinical factors like age , comorbid illness and extremes of body habitus are not considered in the method of dose calculation , which can result in significant toxicity .