For gastric cancer patients with severe peritoneal metastases, 5-fluorouracil (FU)-based chemotherapy regimens provided only marginal improvement in time to treatment failure (TTF) and overall survival (OS). In a retrospective analysis of 92 patients treated between 2001 and 2007, median TTF was 1.9 months, and median OS was 4.6 months. The researchers concluded that a combination of paclitaxel and 5-FU holds promise for this population, but that studies are needed to determine if sequential of combined therapy is better.
The complete study is published online in the May 15 edition of Gastric Cancer (http://www.springerlink.com/content/5404n87728048j28/).