Source: www.oncologyreport.com Author: Miriam E. Tucker Adding chemotherapy to radiotherapy improved 10-year survival of resectable head and neck carcinomas among high-risk patients who had microscopically involved resection margins and/or extracapsular spread of disease – but not in high-risk patients who only had tumor in multiple lymph nodes. The findings come from a long-term update and unplanned subset analysis of 410 evaluable patients from the RTOG (Radiation Therapy Oncology Group) 9501 phase III study, which previously showed no overall survival advantage from the addition of cisplatin chemotherapy to radiation. The new data are "good news," according to lead author Dr. Jay Cooper, director of Maimonides Cancer Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. "We now can eradicate some advanced head and neck tumors that we couldn’t before by adding chemotherapy to radiation therapy. At the same time, we can spare other patients who would not do better with the addition of chemotherapy from its side effects," he said at a head and neck cancer symposium sponsored by the American Society for Radiation Therapy. The RTOG 9501 study randomized 459 patients with high-risk, resected head and neck cancers to receive either radiation therapy of 60 Gy in 6 weeks (RT), or identical radiotherapy plus cisplatin at 100 mg/m2 IV on days 1, 22, and 43 (RT+CT). When reported at a median follow-up of 45.9 months, the locoregional control rate was significantly higher in the combined-therapy group than in the group given radiotherapy alone (hazard ratio for locoregional recurrence, 0.61); disease-free survival was significantly longer with [...]