Clinical analysis of capecitabine alone or combined with paclitaxel chemotherapy in patients with advanced gastric cancer

Abstract

Objective To analyze the safety and efficacy of capecitabine alone or combined with paclitaxel chemotherapy in treatment of patients with advanced gastric cancer.Methods Seventy-two patients with advanced gastric cancers were treated with capecitabine alone or combined with paclitaxel chemotherapy.Patients in capecitabine alone group were treated with capecitabine 1000 mg/m2,twice daily,on 1st- 14th day,21 days as one cycle.Patients in capecitabine combined with paclitaxel group were treated with capecitabine 1000 mg/m2,twice daily,on the 1st- 14th day combined with paclitaxel 175 mg/m2,intravenous infusion on the 1st day (or 80 -90 mg/m2 on the 1st,8th day,or docetaxel 65 -75 mg/m2,on the 1st day,21 days for one cycle.The median overall response of treatment were 3cycles.Results The overall objective response rate was 19.1％ (9/47).The median overall survival and the median progression time was 8.6 months and 5.1 months.For the first-line chemotherapy,objective response rate was 40.0％ (8/20),disease control rate was 70.0％ (14/20) ; the median overall survival in all patients and in the patients with first-line chemotherapy of capecitabine and paclitaxel were 10.9 months and 12.8 months.The incidence of adverse events in capecitabine alone group was low than the others.Conclusions The chemotherapy of capecitabine combined with paclitaxel is effective and tolerable.The patients with KPS ＜ 80 may choose capecitabine alone for the chemotherapy.The survival time of capecitabine combined with paclitaxel is more longer than that of only capecitabine alone group.However,further investigation is still required. Key words: Gastric cancer; Drug therapy; Capecitabine