Chemotherapy in extended small-cell lung cancer. Retrospective analysis of two different series of patients treated with carboplatin and etoposide or ciclophosphamide-epidoxorubicin and etoposide]

Although cisplatin and etoposide seem to represent the treatment of choice in Small-Cell Lung Cancer, a lot of data exist in literature supporting both the use of anthracycline-containing regimens and the use of alternating regimens where platinum-containing regimens and anthracycline-containing regimens are alternatively used as first line in the same patient. In our paper we review the outcomes of two different series of patients treated with ciclophosphamide-epidoxorubicin-etoposide (CEVP16) or carboplatin-etoposide (CBE) for extended Small-Cell Lung Cancer. Sixty-three patients (53.4%) were treated with CEVP16 and 55 patients (46.6%) with CBE. Response Rate (complete plus partial responses) was greater in patients treated with CEVP16 (49.2%) when compared with the response rate in patients treated with CBE (30.9%) (p=0.04 using the Chi-Square test); no differences were observed in the median time to progression (235 vs 199 days, using the Log-Rank test). Overall survival was greater in the CEVP16 group when compared with the CBE one (281 vs 208 days and 35.6% vs 16.3% of patients alive after 2 years of follow up for CEVP16 and CBE respectively, p=0.02 using the Log-Rank test). Although our data present all the methodological limits of the "case-series", it is interesting to observe how an anthracycline-containing regimen seems to be more effective than a platinum-containing one and how it could still play a role in the treatment of extended Small-Cell Lung Cancer.