A trial of biweekly paclitaxel administration in consideration of QOL for advanced or recurrent gynecologic cancer

: At present there is no oral medicine available which is effective for advanced or recurrent case of elderly patients with gynecologic cancer. We report that a low-dose biweekly paclitaxel administration preserves quality of life (QOL) and seems to be "tumor dormancy like" therapy of good compliance with few side effects. A total of 11 cases were in ovarian cancer (5), uterine cancer (3), cervical cancer (2), and uterine sarcoma (1). The median age was 68 years old and the age range was 50 to 79 years old. We performed a standard treatment as a first time treatment. Afterwards, we obtained complete informed consent from the patients for progressive or recurrent cancer and administered biweekly paclitaxel 70 mg/m2 (80-100 mg/body) on an outpatient basis. We reviewed the effect, side effect and compliance of the medication. We judged the side effect based on the Japanese cancer treatment society common toxicity criteria. The result was only one patient death from PD and the other 10 patients were PR or a state of NC without side effect. An ovary cancer case patient lived for 67 months at best, an endometrial cancer case patient lived for 62 months at best, a cervical cancer case patient lived for 74 months at best, and a recurrent uterine sarcoma case patient lived for 76 months after recurrence and the QOL was good. In addition, there was no onset of side effect more than grade 2 in all of the cases and a compliance of medical administration was good. In these cases, we thought that a low-dose of biweekly paclitaxel administration was regarded as a therapy to preserve QOL without a serious side effect and a good compliance of medication. Furthermore, we intend to increase more cases and would like to report them in the future.