Efficacy and safety of consecutive chemotherapy treatments for elderly patients with advanced or recurrent gastric cancer.

e14586 Background: In recent years, the proportion of elderly patients has increased to more than 20% of the population in Japan. Three previous Japanese phase III trials on advanced or recurrent gastric cancer (ARGC) did not accrue patients who were more than 75 years old. Although the above trials showed that S-1 is an effective standard chemotherapeutic agent for ARGC, either dose reduction or prolonged duration of the treatment interval is generally applied to elderly patients. Methods: We conducted a retrospective review of the data of 102 patients with ARGC who received chemotherapy who were given S-1-containing regimens as first line; and irinotecan and paclitaxel as second or third-line treatments. The patients were categorized into a younger group (<75 years old, n = 74) and an elderly group (≥75 years old, n = 28). All drugs started to be administered based on their use in the previous trials and on the generally adopted clinical practice. The drug toxicity, the dose intensity, PFS and OS were c...