Pleurectomy/decortication plus chemotherapy: outcomes of 40 cases of malignant pleural mesothelioma.

Malignant pleural mesothelioma still has a dismal prognosis. Despite good patient selection and a multimodality approach, local disease control remains a problem. Whether submitted to pleurectomy/decortication or to extrapleural pneumonectomy, disease progression occurred in all 40 patients in this study.

Chemotherapy and bio-chemotherapy in patients with advanced melanoma: combination therapy with a nitrosourea.

The treatment of advanced melanoma is still disappointing. In a multicenter randomized clinical trial to compare a chemotherapy (CT) with or without low doses of IL-2 and IFN (Bio-CT), the participating centers chose whether or not to add a nitrosourea, carmustine (BCNU) to the therapy. The aim of the present paper is to report the clinical results of the patients (pts) treated in both arms with BCNU.

Activity and tolerability of courses of intra-arterial chemotherapy followed by chemoembolization in unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma.

Aims And Background: We previously reported encouraging response rates and survival with combined intra-arterial (i.a.) chemotherapy and chemoembolization in unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma.

Mitomycin C and vinorelbine in pretreated breast cancer.

Aims And Background: Vinorelbine, a new semi-synthetic vinca alkaloid, has demonstrated high activity as a single agent in pretreated metastatic breast cancer.

Patients And Methods: To evaluate the activity of the combination vinorelbine-mitomycin C and to reduce the incidence of side effects, in particular myelotoxicity, patients with metastatic breast cancer pretreated with 1 or more chemotherapy regimens for metastatic disease were treated according to the following schedule: mitomycin C, 10 mg/m2 day 1, and vinorelbine, 25 mg/m2, days 1, 8 and 15, every 28 days.

Results: Twenty-seven patients were enrolled and were evaluable for activity and side effects.