INTRODUCTION Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) is the sixth most common malignancy, and follicular lymphoma (FL) is the second most common form of NHL. FL is generally considered to be incurable, and is characterized by periods of remission followed by episodes of relapse, with median survival of 8-10 years. Maintenance treatment is aimed at improving quality of life and survival. AIMS To review t...

BACKGROUND Medulloblastoma in adulthood is rare. Knowledge is limited, and the efficacy and toxicity of chemotherapy--especially in nonmetastatic disease--is still elusive. METHODS Seventy adults aged ≥21 years (median age: 28.5 years) with nonmetastatic medulloblastoma were followed as observational patients within the prospective paediatric multicentre trial HIT 2000. Treatment consisted of...

UNLABELLED WHAT'S KNOWN ON THE SUBJECT? AND WHAT DOES THE STUDY ADD?: Non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer has a significant recurrence and progression rate despite transurethral resection. The current standard of care to lower the risk of recurrence and progression is adjuvant BCG followed by maintenance BCG. Despite this, a significant number of patients experience recurrence and progress to in...

BACKGROUND Maintenance therapy proves to be effective in advanced lung and breast cancer after initial chemotherapy. The purpose of this phase II study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of Uracil and Tegafur (UFT) maintenance in metastatic gastric cancer patients following the first-line fluorouracil-based chemotherapy. METHODS Metastatic gastric cancer patients with stable disease or a...

Lung cancer has become the leading cause of cancer deaths, with nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC) accounting for around 80% of lung cancer cases. Chemotherapy is the main conventional therapy for advanced NSCLC. However, the disease control achieved with classical chemotherapy in advanced NSCLC is usually restricted to only a few months. Thus, sustaining the therapeutic effect of first-line che...

In patients with follicular lymphoma treated with single-agent rituximab, single nucleotide polymorphisms in the FCGR3A gene are known to influence response and progression-free survival. The prognostic role of FCGR3A and FCGR2A polymorphisms in patients with follicular lymphoma treated with rituximab and chemotherapy combination remains controversial and has not been evaluated in the context o...

INTRODUCTION The concept of maintenance therapy is one of the highly relevant approaches in the management of advanced ovarian cancer. The fundamental goal of maintenance therapy is to improve survival outcomes. We attempted to reinforce maintenance chemotherapy by adding oral etoposide following taxane administration. CASES We retrospectively evaluated 14 patients with advanced ovarian cance...

Although response rates are increased, the addition of rituximab to induction chemotherapy has not yet been proven to extend the progression-free and overall survival benefits of chemotherapy alone. In first remission, high-dose therapy plus stem cell rescue improves time to treatment failure and progression-free survival when compared with maintenance interferon alpha. However, relapse rate do...

In patients with epithelian ovarian cancer who have achieved remission after initial surgery and induction chemotherapy, the role of maintenance chemotherapy is controversial. We carried out a trial-sequential analysis that included 4 randomised controlled trials. The end-point was progression at 3 years while the boundary for non-inferiority was set at ±20% in risk ratio. The results of our tr...

OBJECTIVE In children treated for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), catch-up growth occurs after cessation of therapy and not during maintenance therapy. In this study we investigated whether this inhibition of catch-up growth during maintenance treatment is attributable to the influence of chemotherapy or to the influence of corticosteroids. PATIENTS Forty-six children treated for ALL were...