Treatment Options - Alimta

More than 175,000 patients are diagnosed each year in the USA with lung cancer. Of those, 85% have non-small cell lung cancer. The disease in about two-thirds of patients with this kind of cancer has spread beyond the lungs at the time of diagnosis. The recommended treatment is chemotherapy, which extends median survival from about four months with no treatment to about eight months.

The study, presented at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, compared Alimta with Taxotere in a group of 571 patients at medical centers in the USA, Canada, Spain, Brazil and Italy. Nasser Hanna of Indiana University in Indianapolis reported that the side effects were considerably fewer with Alimta.

Survival benefits were about equal, with Alimta patients living a median of 8.3 months compared with 7.9 months in patients on Taxotere.

For patients with only months to live after their diagnosis, quality of life becomes a critical issue.

For patients who are diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer at earlier stages, the recommended treatment has been removal of the section of lung containing the tumor. Whether these patients live longer or better when given chemotherapy after surgery has been controversial.

But a large international study led by Thierry Le Chevalier of the Gustave Roussy Institute in Villejuif, France, suggests chemotherapy may be beneficial. The study of 1,867 patients from 33 countries found that patients who received surgery plus chemotherapy had about a 5% survival benefit over a period of five years.

Worldwide, 1.2 million people are diagnosed with lung cancer each year. About one-third are treated with surgery and may benefit from adding chemotherapy to their treatment, Le Chevalier said. The benefit may seem small, but it translates into the prevention of 7,000 deaths per year worldwide.

Another study, conducted by Roy Patchell of the University of Kentucky in Lexington, found that patients whose spinal cords have become compressed by tumors that have spread from other organs can gain significant relief from a new surgical procedure to remove the tumor.