Clinical response to systemic combined chemotherapy with 5-fluorouracil and cisplatin (FP Therapy) in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer shows high mortality and has a poor prognosis. Although the rate of response to all chemotherapeutic regimens is low, some patients have shown improvement of their symptoms after chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy without obvious tumor regression. We assessed the clinical benefit of systemic combined chemotherapy with 5-fluorouracil and cisplatin (FP therapy) in 21 patients with advanced cancer of the pancreas. The clinical response to FP therapy was evaluated using two parameters: pain (intensity of pain and consumption of morphine) and performance status. A patient was considered to be a clinical responder if one of two parameters was positive and the other was positive or stable. Four patients (19%) responded. Two of the responders achieved partial response according to the objective tumor response, and the remaining two showed no change. The survival period in responders was significant longer than in the other patients. The clinical response may be one parameter for evaluating the results of treatment for pancreatic cancer, and the longer survival period of the clinical responders in this study supports this notion.