New Chemotherapy Agents Improve Cancer Survival Rates

Researchers Say at International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer World Conference

New chemotherapy agents seem to have improved population-level survival among advanced stage, at least for non-small cell lung cancer sufferers. This claims was made by researchers at the at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) world conference, who was held at Seoul, South Korea.

New chemotherapy drugs include Vinorelbine, gemcitabine (Gemzar) and docetaxel (Taxotere). These new drugs are typically used in combination with traditional chemotherapy agents such as carboplatin (Paraplatin).

In a study presented at the IASLC, Dr. von Plessen and colleagues reviewed more than 13,000 cases of advanced-stage non-small-cell lung cancer in the Cancer Registry of Norway that occurred from 1994 to 2005.

These cancer cases were divided into two groups: those from the period 1994 to 1998, before vinorelbine's introduction, and 2000 to 2005 once the drug was widely available for use. Vinorelbine is a third generation chemotherapy agent.

The status of their disease was as follows: 61.2% had metastatic disease, 27.5% had regionally advanced cancer, and the rest (11.3%) had an unspecified metastatic status. Most of the cancer cases were men (65%) with a mean age was 67.5. Patienst had 38% adenomacarcinoma of the time, 28.5% had squamous cell carcinoma, large cell carcinoma (7.1%), and nonspecified type (26.5%).

The researchers found that when the overall survival rate was examined for patients who used new third generation chemotherapy agent Vinorelbine there was an increase in such survival rate. The one-year survival rate increased by as much as 4% (statistically significant). Also, when sales of Vinorelbine were analyzed by county (in Norway) they found tahat those counties where more vinorelbine was sold survival rates where greater than counties with less vinorelbine sales. In this case survival rates improved by as much as 16%.