Clinical outcome of paclitaxel and carboplatin as second-line chemotherapy for advanced urothelial carcinoma resistant to first-line therapy with gemcitabine and cisplatin.

OBJECTIVE

The objective was to investigate the efficacy and tolerability of combined therapy with paclitaxel and carboplatin (TC) in patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma after the failure of first-line chemotherapy with gemcitabine and cisplatin (GC).

PATIENTS AND METHODS

This was a retrospective study including a total of 16 patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma who showed evidence of progressive and/or recurrent disease after first-line therapy with GC and subsequently received second-line chemotherapy consisting of paclitaxel (175 mg/m(2)) and carboplatin (area under the curve 5). TC therapy was repeated every 3 weeks and was continued until disease progression or intolerable toxicity was observed.

RESULTS

The baseline patient characteristics were rather favorable; only 3 of 16 patients had liver metastases and 7 patients had an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status of 0. Of these, response to TC therapy was achieved in 5 (31.3%), including 2 with complete and 3 with partial response. The median progression-free and overall survival times in the 16 patients were 7.9 and 17.3 months, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

TC therapy appeared to show modest activity with acceptable tolerability in patients refractory to GC therapy; therefore, TC chemotherapy might be considered as an alternative option as a second-line regimen for advanced urothelial carcinoma following GC therapy.