[Chemotherapy of small cell bronchial carcinoma].

Many cytotoxic agents exhibit response in oat cell lung cancer. According to response rates those substances my be divided into 3 subgroups. Combination of chemotherapeutic drugs is considerable more active as compared to single agent therapy. Actuarial survival was significantly improved by chemotherapy and is related to dosages and the absolute number of cytotoxics used. Sequential chemotherapy with sequential administration of non-cross resistant schemes seems to be the optimal therapeutic strategy at present time. A ten-fold increase of survival has been shown including a small percentage of long term survivors. It seems likely to assume that those therapies combined in an optimal manner without dose-reductions during induction therapy will further improve survival and percentage of long term survivors.