Carboplatin/etoposide combination chemotherapy in the treatment of poor prognosis patients with small cell lung cancer.

Advances in the treatment of SCLC have been slow but sure over the past decade. It is now recognized that a small subset of patients may be cured of this disease, particularly with combined modality treatment with radiation therapy and systemic chemotherapy. However, perhaps only 25% of all patients will be candidates for this intensive/combined modality approach. Therefore, there is a need to identify effective combination chemotherapy regimens that can be easily administered to the remaining 75% of poor prognosis SCLC patients. Our studies and those of others would suggest that the combination of carboplatin and oral etoposide is a highly effective regimen for the treatment of these patients with results equal to and comparable with more intensive schedules. The ease of administration of this combination with acceptable toxicity would suggest that for such a subset of patients it may be the treatment of choice against which other combination schedules should be compared.