[Combination chemotherapy of anaplastic carcinoma with adriamycin, vincristine, methotrexate and cyclophosphamide (author's transl)].

Taking into account the evolutive features of anaplastic cancers, the authors used four-drug combination chemotherapy with adriamycin, vincristine, methotrexate and cyclophosphamide applied to 55 patients. Treatment was administered in courses of 3 weeks at 15-day intervals and consisted of 3 days of treatment/week, repeated every 15 days. On the whole the treatment was well tolerated; however, the use of adriamycin was restricted because of its cumulative toxicity. Immediate objective responses were observed in 48 patients (87% of the cases) with 32 tumor regressions < 50 per cent (58%), 14 of which were complete remissions. The effects were most distinctive in distant lymph node metastases (78%). In the majority of cases the effects were of brief duration. Whether or not radiotherapy was associated, the overall course of the disease was not significantly influenced. The authors point out that patients responding to this protocol did not achieve the median survival, whereas the median survival was 17 months for an identical period of observation with varied treatments used priorly. The authors conclude that this chemotherapeutic protocol needs to be reinforced and readjusted in order to improve long term results.