Treatment of recurrent and metastatic head and neck cancer with cisplatin/etoposide/bleomycin.

Cisplatin/etoposide/bleomycin (DEB) was given as an outpatient regimen in a novel weekly schedule to 27 patients with recurrent and/or widely metastatic cancer of the head and neck region. Six of these patients also received mitomycin (DEB/M) when their disease failed to respond after at least three weekly DEB doses. All but three patients had been treated previously with radiotherapy directed to the primary site and regional nodal disease; four had also received chemotherapy with cisplatin or carboplatin. Before treatment with DEB, 19 patients had distant metastases. Of an intended 12 doses per patient, a mean of 8.2 was achieved. Myelosuppression was the major toxicity, with neutropenia in 45% of patients and significant anemia in 26%. The overall response rate to DEB in 27 patients was 59%, increasing to 70% after the addition of mitomycin. There were two complete and 17 partial responses. The median duration of response was 12 weeks and median survival was 6 months, with 20% of patients surviving 1 year. We conclude that the relatively short survival time together with the significant toxicity of the DEB/M regimen does not warrant its routine use in clinical practice. However, this regimen, or one patterned on it, should be evaluated in combination with radiotherapy as the initial treatment for selected patients with previously untreated head and neck cancer.

Phase II trial of megestrol in the supportive care of patients receiving dose-intensive chemotherapy.

Megestrol acetate was given daily to lung cancer patients undergoing therapy with CODE and to recurrent head and neck cancer patients receiving DEB/M in an attempt to prevent weight loss. The outcomes in this study were compared with the same outcomes in similar groups of patients treated with the same chemotherapy regimens, but in which prednisone was used as the main supportive drug along with co-trimoxazole, ketoconazole, and either cimetidine or sucralfate. Weight loss was less pronounced in the current patients than in the previous ones. Nevertheless, there were several factors that led us to conclude that megestrol is not an adequate substitute for prednisone in patients receiving this kind of chemotherapy.

Quality of life, appetite, and weight change in patients receiving dose-intensive chemotherapy.

Quality of life was assessed by self-report questionnaires in 30 patients receiving dose-intensive chemotherapy for either non-small-cell lung cancer (20 patients) or recurrent head and neck cancer (10 patients). Megestrol acetate was given daily to try to improve appetite and prevent the weight loss usually associated with this chemotherapy. Appetite did not change significantly overall during the first 4 weeks of chemotherapy, but it did improve in those patients still receiving chemotherapy at 8 weeks. Changes in global quality of life were significantly correlated with changes in appetite, fatigue, energy level, and physical function. Thus, these parameters may have more relevance to patients' perceptions of quality of life than does weight change, and should be used more frequently as endpoints in studies of supportive care and palliative treatment of patients with cancer.

Efficacy of weekly cisplatin-based chemotherapy in recurrent and metastatic head and neck cancer.

After disease recurrence or dissemination, patients who had been treated previously with radiation with or without surgery for cancer of the head and neck were given either cisplatin (16 patients), cisplatin/etoposide (15 patients), or cisplatin/etoposide/5-fluorouracil (5-FU) (19 patients) in an ambulatory care clinic. Intravenous (i.v.) cisplatin 25 mg/m2 was given weekly, while etoposide was given i.v. (80 mg/m2) on day 1 and orally (160 mg/m2) on day 2 of every odd-numbered week. In the three-drug regimen, 5-FU 500 mg/m2 i.v. was given every even-numbered week. Patients in all three groups received daily oral prednisone to decrease myelosuppression and oral co-trimoxazole and ketoconazole to prevent infection. The supportive drugs were given to all groups to keep these variables constant. As expected, myelosuppression did not occur in the cisplatin group, while the rates of severe neutropenia (less than 1.0 x 10(9)/L) in the two- and three-drug groups were 26% and 74%, respectively. The incidence of infection requiring hospitalization was low (2.5%). The response rate (complete plus partial) was lowest in the cisplatin group (6%) and higher in the cisplatin/etoposide (47%) and cisplatin/etoposide/5-FU (53%) groups. Because of the low response rate and the short time to progression (5 weeks) in the cisplatin group, 9 of these 16 patients were treated subsequently with cisplatin/etoposide. Time to progression and response duration were similar in the cisplatin/etoposide and cisplatin/etoposide/5-FU groups--12 and 14 weeks, and 12 and 9 weeks, respectively. Median survival times of the cisplatin and cisplatin/etoposide/5-FU groups were 36 and 34 weeks, respectively.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)