Outcome of combined modality treatment including neoadjuvant chemotherapy of 128 cases of locally advanced breast cancer: Data from a tertiary cancer center in northern India.

Background: Breast cancer is now the most common cancer in many parts of India and the incidence varies from 12 to 31/100000, and is rising. Locally advanced breast cancer (LABC) accounts for 30 - 35% of all cases of breast cancers in India. LABC continues to present a challenge and imposes a major health impact in our country. Materials and Methods: We carried out a analysis of our LABC patients who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) at our hospital over a 10-year period, from January 1995 to December 2004. We analyzed the response to NACT, disease-free survival (DFS), and overall survival (OS). Results: Patients with stages IIIA, IIIB, and IIIC were included. LABC comprised of 26.24% (609 patients) of new patients. One hundred and twenty-eight (31.1%) patients received NACT. Median age was 48 years and estrogen receptor was positive in 64%. Chemotherapy protocol was an FEC (5-Fluorouracil, Epirubicin, Cyclophosphamide) regimen in the following doses: Cyclophosphamide 600 mg/m2, 5-FU 600 mg/m2, and Epirubicin 75 mg/m2 given every three weeks, six doses, followed by modified radical mastectomy (MRM) and locoregional radiotherapy. The overall response rate (complete response (CR) + partial response (PR)) was 84.4%, clinical CR (cCR) was 13.3% and pathological CR (pCR) was 7.8%. Median DFS and OS were 33 and 101 months, respectively. The disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) at five years were 41 and 58%, respectively. Conclusions: This study analyzes the outcome in patients who received NACT, in the largest number of LABC patients from a single center in India, and our results are comparable to the results reported from other centers.

Role of radiotherapy in the combined treatment of patients with early stage extranodal nasal type NK/T-cell lymphoma and analysis of prognostic factors / 中华放射肿瘤学杂志

Objective To investigate the role of radiotherapy (RT) and prognostic factors in the combined modality treatment (CMT) of patients with stage ⅠE-ⅡE extranodal nasal type NK/T-cell lym-phoma. Methods From Dec. 1990 to Dec. 2006,177 patients who were diagnosed and treated in our hos-pital were retrospectively analyzed,induding 37 received chemotherapy (CT) alone ( median 4 cycles), 128 received CT (median 3 cycles) followed by RT (median 52 Gy) ,6 received RT alone (median 58 Gy) and 6 received RT ( median 54 Gy) followed by CT ( median 5 cycles). Results The overall response ( CR + PR) rate after initial CT was 60.8% compared with 83.8% after RT ( x2 = 28.63, P < 0.01 ). The 5-year overall survival (OS) and progress-free survival (PFS) rates were 46.2% and 36.8% ,respectively. The lo-cal control rates were 80.9% for RT ( alone or with CMT) and 50.0% for CT alone (x2 = 14.39, P < 0.01 ), and corresponding 5-year OS and PFS were 53.4% vs. 18.3 % ( x2 = 23.38, P < 0.01 ) and 45.0% vs. 10.9% (x2 =23.46,P <0.01 ),respectively. Compared with CT alone,the following definitive RT for patients who achieved response or not after initial CT significantly improved the local control [83.5%, 76.2% vs. 50.0% (x2 = 14.13,P <0.01;x2 =5.78,P <0.01)] and 5-year OS[56.2%,48.6% vs. 18.3%(x2 =28.87,P <0. 05;x2 =4.80,P <0.05)]. Concinsions Compared with CT alone, RT a-chieves better tumor response, local control and survival of patients not only with tumor response but also with local progression after CT. Definitive RT should be the reasonable choice of treatment for early stage extran-odal nasal type NK/T-cell lymphoma.

Single Institutional Experience of Bladder-Preserving Trimodality Treatment for Muscle-Invasive Bladder Cancer

The authors designed this study to determine the clinical effectiveness of trimodality treatment, i.e., transurethral resection of a bladder tumor (TURBT) and concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CRT). Twenty patients with a muscle-invasive bladder cancer were treated by TURBT followed by concurrent cisplatin (75 mg/m(2) day), administered on weeks 1 and 4 of radiotherapy. According to residual tumor status after TURBT, patients were classified into patients with a complete TURBT group and incomplete TURBT group. Response to treatment was evaluated by restaging TURBT at 4 weeks after completing CRT (post-CRT). Fifteen patients (75%) achieved complete remission (CR) at restaging; 10 patients (50%) remained continuously free of tumor recurrence. Disease-specific and overall survivals were 51.1% and 38.6% at 5 yr post-CRT, respectively. Of 16 patients in the complete TURBT group, 14 patients (87.5%) achieved CR, which was significantly different from that observed in the incomplete TURBT group, in which only 1 (25%) of 4 patients achieved CR (p=0.032). Five- year disease-specific and overall survivals were 71.6% and 53.5%, respectively. Ten patients (90.9%) maintained their own bladder among the 11 surviving patients. Trimodality treatment was found to be an effective treatment in patients who underwent complete TURBT for a muscle-invasive bladder cancer.

Treatment of 212 patients with limited-disease small cell lung cancer / 中华放射医学与防护杂志

Objective To review the treatment effect of limited disease small cell lung cancer (LD-SCLC) and to evaluate the prognosis factors for SCLC. Methods From Aug. 2002 to Feb. 2006, 212 patients of SCLC confirmed with pathology and cytology were. Treated by combined modality. All patients were treated with chemotherapy 2-6 cycles, 59 patients of which were treated with only chemotherapy, 108 patients of which were treated with chemotherapy plus radiotherapy, 45 patients of which were treated with surgery plus chemotherapy with or without radiotherapy. The patients of radiotherapy were exposed to 6 or 10 MV X-ray with a total dose of 40-66 Gy in 4-7 weeks. Results The overall median survival time was 15 months. The 1-,2- and 3-year overall survival rate were 58.0%, 33.2% and 22.1%, respectively. Univariate analysis indicated that weight loss, age, LDH, ECOG performance status, operation, response to radio-chemotherapy, cycles for chemotherapy, radiotherapy irflueoced survival significantly in LD-SCLC. Multivariate analysis suggested that ECOG performance status, response to therapy, cycles for chemotherapy were the independent prognostic factors for LD-SCLC. Conclusions For LD-SCLC patients, ECOG performance ≤ 1, good response to radio-chemotherapy, and ≥ 4 cycles chemotherapy show encouraging survival rate, Distance metastasis is still the mainstay of treatment failure.

Radiation therapy of nasopharyngeal cancers / 영남의대학술지

Radiotherapeutically, nasopharyngeal caner is an important disease in Korea. Because of its blind anatomic location, early detection is relatively uncommon. Clinically, most of cases are locally advanced and nodal involvements are common. Recently better understanding of nature of the disease and improvement of radio – therapy technique permit better treatment result, including locoregional control and survival rate, and minimal normal tissue damages comparing with previously published date. We analyzed 31 patients of pathologically proven and previously untreated naso – pharyngeal carcinoma with different treatment techniques, retrospectively. Minimal and maximal follow up period of the survivor is 6 months and 68 months, respectively. Thirteen patients with squamous cell carcinoma are included in this analysis. The median age is 49 years (range from 20 to 64 years). Twenty two patients are stage III. Eleven patients are treated with radiotherapy alone and 20 are treated with combined modalities treatment. The degree of response after radiotherapy are categorized by 3-classes, i,e. complete response, partial response. In spite of similarities of complete response rate and 1-year survival rate between two different treatment techniques, those patients with undifferentiated carcinoma appear to benefit from the adjuvant chemotherapy. In addition, systemic failure is more suggest that adjuvant therapy in the radiotherapeutic management of nasopharyngeal cancer needs additional research according to histologic types and future extensive clinical trials.

The Result of Combined Modality Treatment for Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma of Head and Neck / 대한치료방사선과학회지

From April 1985 to September 1989, 26 patients with stage IandII non-Hodgkin's lymphoma of unfavorable histology localized in head and neck region were treated with combined modality (combination chemotherapy plus radiotherapy) at the Department of Therapeutic Radiology in Kyungpook National University Hospital. Of the 26 patients, 23 showed complete response and 3 partial response. Between these two groups there were no statistical differences according to the variables. Three-year survival and disease-free survival rate were 62.4% and 65.2%, respectively. Unilateral involvement of neck node (p<0.05), radiation dose over 5000 cgy (p<0.01,) and 6 or more cycles chemotherapy (p=0.06) had a favorable effect on 3-year survival rate. There were 8 recurrences including 3 partial responders, 1 local failure, 1 distant failure, 1 contiguous failure, and 2 simultaneous local and distant failure. It could be suggested that combined modality treatment might be necessary for the treatment of stage IandII Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma of unfavorable histology.