The symptomatic benefit (the clinical benefit response) from the second-line chemotherapy in patients with advanced gastric adenocarcinoma

There are few reports on use of symptomatic benefits as an alternative or adjunctive for the assessment of objective response in chemotherapy of the advanced cancer. This study is performed to assess the symptomatic benefits (the clinical benefit response), in addition to the efficacy and toxicity of cisplatin plus infusional 5‐fluorouracil (5‐FU) combination as second‐line therapy in patients with advanced gastric cancer. Fifty‐eight advanced gastric cancer patients with previous chemotherapy were enrolled into the study. Cisplatin 20 mg/m2 was given for 5 days, and 5‐FU was given 1000 mg/m2 as 20 h continuous infusion for 5 days, repeated every 28 days. The overall objective response rate was 11.3%, and overall tumour control rate was 33.9%. The clinical benefit response, in terms of weight gain, reduction in analgesic consumption and the improvement in performance status observed in 12 patients [six patients with partial response (PR) and six patients with stable disease (SD)] (22.6%), while the rates of the clinical benefit response in patients with PR and with SD were 100% and 50% respectively. Cisplatin plus infusional 5‐FU combination seems to improve disease‐related symptoms (clinical benefit response) of patients with advanced gastric cancer, even in patients without objective response.