THURSDAY, May 15 (HealthDay News) -- Adding chemotherapy to
other treatments being giving to patients with mesothelioma, a lung
cancer usually linked to asbestos exposure, does not appear to
improve either survival or quality of life.
Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM), which is usually fatal, is
a cancer of the protective lining that covers the lungs. Asbestos
is still produced or used in large quantities in countries such as
Russia, China, Canada, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Zimbabwe, India and
Thailand.
In the study, published in this week's issue of
The Lancet, groups of mesothelioma patients received one of
two chemotherapy regimes (four cycles of mitomycin, vinblastine and
cisplatin every three weeks or one injection of vinorelbine every
week for 12 weeks) in addition to active symptom control (ACS)
treatments. ACS can include steroids, painkillers, bronchodilators
and palliative radiotherapy to control the cancer's symptoms.
Another group only received the symptom control treatments.
At the time of the analysis, roughly 96 percent of patients in
all three groups had died. Only a slight but statistically
insignificant improvement in survival rates after one year was
found when comparing the two chemotherapy groups combined to those
receiving only treatment for symptoms (32 percent vs. 29
percent).
Patients in the chemotherapy group that received vinorelbine,
though, did have a slightly better survival rate (37 percent) than
the other two groups but, again, researchers said this was not
statistically significant.
Quality-of-life scores (physical functioning, pain, shortness of
breath, overall health status) were similar in the three
groups.
"The addition of chemotherapy to ASC offers no significant
benefits in terms of overall survival or quality of life. However,
exploratory analyses suggested that vinorelbine merits further
investigation," the authors concluded.
More information
The National Cancer Institute has more about
mesothelioma.
