Triplet or Doublet Chemotherapy Regimens in Metastatic Gastric Cancer

Abstract

Chemotherapy is the most important treatment option for patients diagnosed at an advanced stage. Chemotherapy both prolongs survival and increases the quality of life. Today, there is still no definite information about whether doublet or triplet chemotherapy should be chosen in empirical therapy. Therefore, we designed our study to evaluate first-line treatment options in metastatic gastric cancer.Our study is retrospective and involves five centers in Turkey. Inclusion criteria were the presence of metastatic gastric adenocarcinoma pathology, not having received treatment for local gastric cancer (surgery, chemotherapy, or radiotherapy), having received chemotherapy (patients with two or more combinations of drugs were included in the study, and patients who received single-drug chemotherapy were not included) for metastatic disease and being HER-2 negative. The survival of the triplet chemotherapy group was significantly longer when compared with the patients who received oxaliplatin-based doublet chemotherapy (11.1 vs. 8.1 months p=0.007). When the patients who received triplet chemotherapy and those who received cisplatin-based doublet chemotherapy were compared, there was no statistically significant difference (11.13 vs. 10.57 months p=0.665).If chemotherapy will be chosen as the first-line treatment in metastatic gastric cancer, choosing triplet chemotherapy regimens if possible, and if doublet chemotherapy will be given for any reason, choosing cisplatin-based regimens may be more appropriate, especially for the patient population in Turkey.