Sunday, May 16, 2010

Mesothelioma Chemotherapy: Cisplatin and Carboplatin


Mesothelioma Chemotherapy - A mesothelioma articles recently published in scientific journals Lung Cancer that investigates the benefits and costs with a combination of cisplatin and carboplatin and Pemetrexed Pemetrexed for mesothelioma chemotherapy.

Pemetrexed and cisplatin combination chemotherapy is one of several choices of chemotherapy that has proven quite successful in the treatment of patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma or malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM), but this combination can be very toxic to the body. There is no treatment and care for malignant mesothelioma cancer without any unwanted side effects.

In these journals the researchers noted that "there are two phases of the study in phase III randomized to the prognosis of mesothelioma showed benefit with the use of antifolates such as raltitrexed or Pemetrexed, when combined with cisplatin. The study has demonstrated an absolute improvement in overall survival of 2.6 and an average of 2.8 months, compared with single treatment for cisplatin. This makes a lot of institutions using cisplatin and Pemetrexed as a standard Mesothelioma Chemotherapy treatment palliative for malignant pleural mesothelioma."


Unfortunately, the combination of cisplatin and Pemetrexed produce unwanted toxic effects and it encourages researchers to study other chemotherapeutic drugs to be combined with Pemetrexed. The researchers said, "Recently, two phase II trials have evaluated the efficacy of carboplatin and will Pemetrexed in MPM. Both studies showed overall response rate of 18.6 and 25%, with a survival rate average of 12.7 and 14 months. As a continuation of these results, we conducted a retrospective analysis in patients with MPM who were treated with carboplatin and Pemetrexed in our institution."

In an effort to find a combination of mesothelioma chemotherapy with minimal toxicity and side effects, the researchers investigated further by replacing cisplatin with carboplatin when paired with Pemetrexed. Using a retrospective approach, researchers evaluated 49 cases of malignant pleural mesothelioma with a combination of carboplatin and Pemetrexed and compare the results with the data given cisplatin combination chemotherapy with Pemetrexed.

Level of disease control (known in the absence of signs of progressive mesothelioma through CT scan) for patients is 69 percent, and partial response and stable disease percentage of 28 percent and 41 percent. Clinical improvement is shown in figure 69 percent, the majority of patients reported increased profits after two cycles of chemotherapy. Toxicity is generally low and better than the toxicity of cisplatin with Pemetrexed.

The average time of treatment failure was 4.6 months. The average overall survival in this study is 14 months, compared with cisplatin-pemetrexed for 12.1 months. Researchers argued, "As a conclusion, our data showed a combination of carboplatin and Pemetrexed may become an option in the mesothelioma treatments, especially in patients who experience problems with the use of cisplatin.

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