A randomized controlled postoperative adjuvant immunochemotherapy for non-small cell lung carcinoma

Abstract

A prospective clinical study was performed to clarify the role of OK- 432 in adjuvant therapy for resected cases of lung carcinoma. A total of 219 patients with resected non-small cell lung cancer were registered from July 1986 through June 1989. Patients were stratified according to the pathological TNM classification and assigned to one of treatment arms consisting of UFT (group A) or UFT + Vindesine (group B, D) or UFT + Vindesine+OK-432 (group C, E). There were statistically no differences in the survival curves among group A, group B and group C. The survival curve of group E was significantly improved as compared with group D, as evidenced by the logrank test. Subset analysis showed that patients in Stage III and patients with squamous cell carcinoma benefited the most from the treatment including OK-432. Concerning the site of cancer recurrence, the patients in groups C and E had fewer distant metastases than the patients in groups A, B and D. These results suggest that the adjuvant chemotherapy with OK-432 can be useful for resected non-small cell lung carcinoma, and may prolong the survival of the patients.