• 2/9/2008
  • Paris, France
  • Shazia Qureshi
  • Doctor’s Guide (www.docguide.com)

Combination therapy with capecitabine and docetaxel showed a partial response in 38.5% of patients with advanced head and neck cancer, according to findings from a study reported here at the 19th International Congress on Anti-Cancer Treatment (ICACT).

Docetaxel and capecitabine previously have been shown to be useful drugs in the treatment of head and neck cancer,” said the study’s lead author, Joan Manel Mañé, MD, Medical Oncologist, Hospital de Cruces, Bilbao, Spain, who presented the study in a poster session on February 7. For this reason, her team conducted a study to evaluate the combination of these two drugs in nonselected patients with advanced ormetastatic head and neck cancer.

Dr. Mañé and colleagues enrolled 33 patients with a mean age of 60 years who presented with squamous-cell locally advanced or metastatic (M1) head and neck cancer. One patient was female. The cancer was local in 49% of patients, local and M1 in 36% of patients, and M1 in 15% of patients. Of those patients whose cancer was staged as M1, the main site of the metastasis was the lungs in 76.5% of patients, lymph nodes in 11.8%, bone in 5.9%, and soft tissue in 5.9% of patients.

The treatment regimen consisted of 75 mg/m2 of docetaxel on day 1, and capecitabine at a dose of 950 mg/m2 every 12 hours on days 2 to 14. Patients received this combination therapy every 3 weeks for a mean of 4 treatment cycles (range 1-7).

The researchers were able to evaluate treatment response in 26 of the patients. A complete response was seen in 7.7% and a partial response in 38.5% of patients. In addition, 34.6% of patients achieved stable disease and 19.2% had disease progression.

The findings also showed that median time to progression was 21 weeks (95% confidence interval [CI] 17.5-24.2). Median overall survival was 39.8 weeks (95% CI 32.4-47.4).

The most commonly occurring severe adverse events in the study patients included neutropenia, febrile neutropenia, mucositis, and asthenia. Two patients suffered toxic deaths.

Combination therapy with capecitabine and docetaxel appears to be effective in first-line treatment of advanced head and neck cancer and should be evaluated in larger studies, Dr. Mañé concluded.

Presentation title:
First-Line Docetaxel (Dx) and Capecitabine (Cap) in Advanced Head and Neck Cancer. Poster 178