Two consecutive cases of platinum-refractory pulmonary pleomorphic carcinoma that showed dramatic responses to MAID (mesna, doxorubicin, ifosfamide and dacarbazine) chemotherapy.

When oncologists encounter patients with pulmonary pleomorphic carcinoma, most cases have recurrent disease after surgery or metastatic disease. Previous studies have suggested that patients with pleomorphic carcinoma have extremely poor responses to chemotherapy regimens commonly used for non-small cell lung cancer and have a dismal prognosis. This report describes two consecutive patients with platinum-refractory pulmonary pleomorphic carcinoma who received doxorubicin, ifosfamide plus dacarbazine chemotherapy. Both patients showed dramatic responses to this combination chemotherapy and the treatment effect was sustained for 7 and 9 months, respectively. Our report strongly suggests that the treatment approaches to patients with pulmonary pleomorphic carcinoma should differ from the approaches to patients with other common types of non-small cell lung cancer. Doxorubicin, ifosfamide plus dacarbazine chemotherapy may have an important role in the treatment of patients with pulmonary pleomorphic carcinoma.