Living with head and neck cancer involves a difficult road of treatment. For patients with high-risk cancer after surgery, doctors are looking for ways to manage chemotherapy that are both effective and manageable. A recent trial looked at two different ways of giving cisplatin, a common chemotherapy drug, to see if changing the schedule changed the outcome.
Researchers compared giving a smaller dose of cisplatin every week for seven cycles against a larger dose every three weeks for three cycles. The study found that the weekly schedule was not inferior to the three-week schedule in terms of overall survival. Specifically, the five-year survival rate was 71.2% for those on the weekly plan compared to 58.7% for those on the three-week plan.
While the survival rates were similar enough to call the treatments comparable, the weekly group showed numerically better results for staying cancer-free. Safety data showed no significant differences in late side effects between the two groups. This finding suggests that the weekly schedule is a reasonable alternative for patients undergoing treatment for squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck.
