Author/Editor		Jagodic, Monika
Title		Peroralno zdravljenje z etopozidom pri bolnicah z razsejanim rakom dojk
Type		monografija
Place		Ljubljana
Publisher		Medicinska fakulteta
Publication year		1999
Volume		str. 61
Language		slo
Abstract		Metastatic breast cancer is a chronic, incurable disease. Treatment of these patients is performed with a palliative intent, and therefore it sbould be as far as possible comfortable to the patients. When treatment with the cytotoxic drugs known to be most effective for brust canccr has failed, other drugs are used as the so-called salvage therapy. For such a treatment, different cytotoxic drugs, generally in combined schedules are used. In patients with metastatic breast cancer, treatment with VP-16 was found to be effective. The possibility of peroral use and moderate side effects make this treatment very suitable. Taken orally, VP-16 shows great differences in bioavailability, which renders its effects unpredictable. There are only few reports about patients and disease characteristics that influence the effectiveness of peroral VP-16 treatment. Our retrospective study included 75 patients with advanced breat cancer, who had already been treated with standard cytotoxic drugs, and received salvage chemotherapy VP-16 100 mg/day for 10 days every 3 weeks, in the period from 1993 to 1997. Peroral VP-16 treatment proved effective in 37% of patients. A significantly better response to VP-16 was achieved in patients who had responded to previous anthracycline-containing regimens than in those in whom that treatment had been ineffective (50 % vs.17 %, respectively, p = 0,016). A better response to VP-16 was also noted in patients with a long disease-free interval, with predominant soft tissue and bone metastatic sites, with up to two metastatic sites and a long time interval between the first course of previous chemotherapy and the onset of VP-16 treatment. These ditferences, however, did not reach the levels of statistical significance. (Abstract truncated at 2000 characters.)
Descriptors		BREAST NEOPLASMS ETOPOSIDE ANTHRACYCLINES SALVAGE THERAPY SLOVENIA WOMEN NEOPLASM METASTASIS SURVIVAL ANALYSIS