Adjuvant Cancer Chemotherapy of Gastric Cancer

Tetsuro Kubota

Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, Keio University

The response rate of gastric cancer to chemotherapy is limited. While European meta-analysis indicated that the adjuvant chemotherapy offers no additional benefit for patients with curatively resected gastric cancer, some positive results were obtained in Japanese experience. When we have applied the chemosensitivity test (MTT assay) to evaluate the adjuvant chemotherapy, it was elucidated that the sensitive group showed a better prognosis than the insensitive group and the group without chemotherapy with significant differences at p<0.01. This result was also confirmed by the collaborative and blind study in which all the patients were treated with a single arm chemotherapy and their chemosensitivity was evaluated by histoculture drug response assay. In this study, the overall survival rate of the sensitive group was better than that of the resistant group (p<0.0006 by log rank test). From these results, the chemosensitivity test was thought to be adequate in evaluating an appropriate cancer chemotherapy after the surgery of gastric cancer.

Key words
gastric cancer, adjuvant chemotherapy, MTT assay

Reprint requests
Tetsuro Kubota Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, Keio University
35 Shinanomachi, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 160-8582 JAPAN

Accepted
May 19, 1998

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