Long-term outcome of continuous 5-fluorouracil/cisplatin-based chemotherapy followed by chemoradiation in patients with resected gastric cancer

Despite substantial developments in gastric cancer treatment, the majority of patients relapse after definitive surgery. We have previously described well-tolerated adjuvant regimen that includes a combination of bolus 5-fluorouracil, continuous 5-fluorouracil, and cisplatin followed by chemoradiation after 3 months of chemotherapy. The aim of this study was to evaluate long-term outcomes of patients treated with this regimen and to determine whether expressions of the excision repair cross-complementing (ERCC1) and thymidylate synthase (TS) predict clinical outcome in those patients. The study population consisted of 36 advanced gastric cancer patients. Patients were treated with six cycles of continuous 5-fluorouracil (600 mg/m²) for 24 h, push 5-fluorouracil (400 mg/m²), and leucoverin (LCV) (200 mg/m²) on day 1-2 every 2 weeks, cisplatin (60 mg/m²) on day 1 every 4 weeks followed by combined modality therapy using 45 Gy at 1.8 Gy per day concomitant with weekly bolus 5-fluorouracil (600 mg/m²) and LCV (50 mg). After median follow-up of 48.9 months, the median disease-free survival was 45 months and the overall survival was 66.4 months. Sixteen patients (44 %) were alive and disease-free. There was no significant correlation between ERCC1 expression and TS expression pattern and time to relapse (P = 0.302 and P = 0.707, respectively). In conclusion, long-term follow-up demonstrates that postoperative chemoradiation with combination of bolus 5-fluorouracil, continuous 5-fluorouracil, and cisplatin is a feasible approach.