Chemotherapy and prognosis in advanced thymic carcinoma patients

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:The role of chemotherapy in treating advanced thymic carcinoma is unclear. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the efficacy of chemotherapy and the prognostic factors for patients with advanced thymic carcinoma.METHODS:A retrospective review of the medical records of 86 patients treated with chemotherapy for advanced thymic carcinoma was conducted between 2000 and 2012 at our institution. The clinical characteristics, chemotherapy regimens and prognostic factors were analyzed. Survival curves were plotted using the Kaplan–Meier method and the Cox proportional hazard model was used for multivariate analysis.RESULTS:Of the 86 patients, 56 were male and 30 were female. The median survival time was 24.5 months. For the first-line chemotherapy treatment, the objective response rate was 47.7% and the disease control rate was 80.2%. The median progression-free survival for all patients was 6.5 months for first-line chemotherapy. No significant differences in progression-free survival were observed among the different chemotherapy regimens. Multivariate analyses revealed that the prognostic factors for overall survival included performance status (p=0.043), histology grade (p=0.048), and liver metastasis (p=0.047).CONCLUSION:Our results suggest that there is no difference in efficacy between multiagent and doublet regimens. The prognosis of patients with advanced thymic carcinoma can be predicted based on histological grade, liver metastasis and performance status.

The incidence and prognosis of thymic squamous cell carcinoma

“…Besides, Yen et al [ 18 ] reported that among 82 patients with recurrent thymic carcinoma after surgical intervention, postoperative chemotherapy yielded the best progression-free survival outcomes after recurrence. In a study of 86 cases of advanced thymic carcinoma by Song et al, [ 19 ] the objective response rate to first-line chemotherapy was 47.7%, and the disease control rate was 80.2%. Yabuki and Minowa [ 21 ] reported a case of long survival and recurrence of thymic carcinoma 10 years after resection followed by concurrent chemoradiotherapy.…”

Prognostic Factors and Efficacy of First-Line Chemotherapy in Patients with Advanced Thymic Carcinoma: A Retrospective Analysis of 286 Patients from NEJ023 Study

“…Therefore, the NCCN Guidelines recommend carboplatin/paclitaxel as first-line chemotherapy for patients with advanced thymic carcinoma [15]. On the other hand, anthracycline-based multidrug regimens, such as ADOC, are also widely used as first-line chemotherapy in clinical practice, which could be more effective than carboplatin/paclitaxel [6,15,23]. However, the toxicities of anthracycline-based regimens, especially bone marrow suppression, are reportedly more severe than those of platinum-based doublets [5,6,8,9,[11][12][13][14][15].…”

Erweiterte Resektionsverfahren bei lokal fortgeschrittenen Tumoren des Thymus im Stadium III

“…Unter Kombinationschemotherapien, meist nach PAC-Schema (Cisplatin, Doxorubicin, Cyclophosphamid) oder mit Cisplatin und Etoposid, kann in ca. 70 % der Fälle eine partielle Remission erzielt werden [17,37,38]. So können primär nicht radikal operable Tumoren vorbehandelt und nach 2-4 Therapiezyklen hinsichtlich einer Resektabilität reevaluiert werden.…”