Lung cancer

摘要

Aging society is coming now, the ratio of elderly patients among all lung cancer patients has currently been increasing. It is necessary for elderly patients who are under-represented in clinical trials to study their suitable regimen. Thus, phase II and III clinical trials have been performed specifically for elderly non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and small cell lung cancer (SCLC) patients all over the world. As for single agent chemotherapy, there is a strong rationale for docetaxel and vinorelbine in elderly patients with advanced NSCLC. Recently, there are phase I and II clinical trial for CPT-11 monotherapy, and gefitinib and TS-1 are reasonable options for elderly patients. Alimta is tolerable for elderly, and subset analysis is performed for the elderly with recurrent NSCLC. As platinum-based chemotherapy, there are several elderly subset analyses and JCOG 0207, which is a phase III trial now in progress comparing weekly cisplatin+weekly docetaxel and weekly docetaxel. In SCLC, there is no evidence of single agent chemotherapy but combination chemotherapy such as carboplatin+etoposide is recommended. A phase III study of carboplatin+etoposide versus amrubicin under way. These studies should aim to optimize several agents for elderly patients and prolong survival, palliative care.