Retrospective Cohort Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Oncol. Feb 24, 2022; 13(2): 147-158
Published online Feb 24, 2022. doi: 10.5306/wjco.v13.i2.147
First-line cisplatin, docetaxel, and cetuximab for patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck cancer: A multicenter cohort study
Agustín Falco, Mariano Leiva, Albano Blanco, Guido Cefarelli, Andrés Rodriguez, Juan Melo, Federico Cayol, Manglio Miguel Rizzo, Alejandro Sola, Hernán Rodríguez Montani, Matías Chacon, Diego Enrico, Federico Waisberg
Agustín Falco, Mariano Leiva, Department of Medical Oncology, Head and Neck Unit, Alexander Fleming Cancer Institute, Buenos Aires 1428, Argentina
Albano Blanco, Guido Cefarelli, Andrés Rodriguez, Matías Chacon, Diego Enrico, Federico Waisberg, Department of Medical Oncology, Alexander Fleming Cancer Institute, Buenos Aires 1426, Argentina
Juan Melo, Federico Cayol, Department of Medical Oncology, Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires 1199, Argentina
Manglio Miguel Rizzo, Department of Medical Oncology, Hospital Universitario Austral, Pilar 1629, Argentina
Alejandro Sola, Department of Medical Oncology, Fundación Centro Oncológico de Integración Regional, Mendoza 5500, Argentina
Hernán Rodríguez Montani, Department of Medical Oncology, Hospital Italiano Rosario; Sanatorio de la Mujer, Rosario 2001, Argentina
Author contributions: Falco A provided the study concept and designed the study; Falco A, Leiva M, Blanco A, Cefarelli G, Enrico D, and Waisberg F contributed to the data acquisition and quality control of data; Falco A, Leiva M, Blanco A, Enrico D, and Waisberg F contributed to the data analysis and interpretation; all authors contributed to manuscript preparation and editing and have read and approved the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved for publication by the Institutional Review Board of each center according to the Argentinian ethical norms and regulations for multicenter studies.
Informed consent statement: Patients were not required to give their informed consent for this study because the analysis used anonymous data lacking patient names, addresses, dates of birth, wards, bed numbers, and hospital numbers and other private information.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors have no conflicts of interest related to the manuscript.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Agustín Falco, MD, Staff Physician, Department of Medical Oncology. Head and Neck Unit, Alexander Fleming Cancer Institute, Cramer 1180, Buenos Aires 1428, Argentina. afalco@alexanderfleming.org
Received: June 22, 2021
Peer-review started: June 22, 2021
First decision: July 16, 2021
Revised: August 4, 2021
Accepted: January 17, 2022
Article in press: January 17, 2022
Published online: February 24, 2022
Core Tip

Core Tip: We evaluated the safety and efficacy of the combination platinum, taxanes, and cetuximab scheme as a first-line therapy for patients with recurrent or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck in a real-world setting. Among the 24 patients included, the median progression-free survival was 6.9 mo (95% confidence interval: 6.5-7.3), and the overall survival rate at 12 mo was 82.4%, which was consistent with previous clinical trials. Patients with documented tumor response showed statistically better progression-free survival than those with disease stabilization or progression (P = 0.034). The combination platinum, taxanes, and cetuximab regimen was adequately tolerated by most of the analyzed patients, as the incidence of grade 3-4 adverse events was surprisingly lower than expected (25%).