Tumor dormancy therapy in recurrent head and neck cancer

Abstract

The objective of chemotherapy for unresectable or recurrent advanced cancer is to improve the overall survival time rather than the overall response rate. Tumor dormancy therapy has reduced toxicity and can be administered for a long time, and results in an improvement in time to progression and survival time. Randomized studies have not proven a relationship between chemotherapy dose and therapeutic effects. Although a low dose of chemotherapy induced lower treatment toxicity than a high dose, we did not observe any improvement in terms of overall survival. The survival time was significantly longer in patients with progression-free survival (PFS) of more than 3 months than in patients with PFS of less than 3 months in the treatment of Nedaplatin and UFT for recurrent head and neck cancer in our study. Furthermore, there were no significant differences between the survival of NC patients with PFS of more than 3 months and CR+PR patients in the treatment of Nedaplatin and UFT. A future goal is to establish the tumor dormancy therapy to improve the survival rate for recurrent head and neck cancer without decreased QOL of the patient.