Do elderly patients with non-small cell lung cancer get the best out of recent advances in first-line treatment? A comparative study in two tertiary cancer centers in Greece.

Background: Elderly patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) are thought to receive suboptimal treatment mainly due to concerns for poor compliance and/or excessive toxicity.

Patients And Methods: Using the age of 70 years as the pre-defined cut-off, we compared elderly patients with advanced NSCLC suitable for first line chemotherapy with their younger counterparts in terms of: i) diagnosis and disease characteristics ii) adherence to treatment schedule, including dose intensity (DI), and relative dose intensity (RDI), iii) toxicity, tolerance, and efficacy outcomes.

Results: Among 292 eligible patients, data were available for 245, of whom 107 (43.

A phase III study of 5-fluorouracil versus 5-fluorouracil plus interferon alpha 2b versus 5-fluorouracil plus leucovorin in patients with advanced colorectal cancer: a Hellenic Cooperative Oncology Group (HeCOG) study.

We conducted a phase III study in patients with advanced colorectal carcinoma (ACC). The total number of patients randomized from October 1993 until July 1998 was 192, whereas therapy was started on 179 and 158 (82.3%) have been evaluable.