Gan to kagaku ryoho. Cancer & chemotherapy
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To assess the burden on families who care for a patients in the terminal stage of cancer at home. ⋯ Monitoring the burden of the family was useful in evaluating the patients' environment at home, and in reconsidering the management of the terminal care at home.
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Gan To Kagaku Ryoho · Oct 2000
Clinical Trial[Weekly administration of paclitaxel for advanced or metastatic breast cancer--short-course premedications for outpatients].
A phase II trial has demonstrated that paclitaxel (210 mg/m2/3 hr) showed a 33.3% response rate among anthracycline-resistant breast cancer patients in Japan. Recently, weekly dosing of paclitaxel has been demonstrated to be a well-tolerated, feasible and effective administration schedule. Standard premedication is commonly administered prior to treatment with paclitaxel. ⋯ Allopecia was observed in 4 patients, and peripheral neuropathy in 1 patient (both grade 1). Weekly administration of paclitaxel is effective and well-tolerated in patients with advanced or metastatic breast cancer, with a minimum of peripheral neuropathy. In addition to the above, no hypersensitive reaction in the short course premedication schedule suggests that this administration schedule is feasible for outpatients.
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To reduce the number of patients treated at low and biologically inactive doses in phase I trials of anticancer agents, attempts to decrease the number of patients per dose level and to conduct a larger dose escalation have been made. Among them, accelerated titration designs were proposed and evaluated by simulation; designs 2 and 4 were reported to be acceptable (J Natl Cancer Inst 89: 1138-1147, 1997). Both designs 2 and 4 included only one patient per cohort during the initial accelerated phase. ⋯ Decision-making on dose escalation based on the information on toxicity in three courses might be cumbersome. Therefore, in Japan, design 2 would be recommended among the proposed accelerated designs. The performance of the design should be investigated by applying it to actual phase I studies and by evaluating the number of undertreated and overtreated patients.