Adjuvant chemotherapy with S-1 for advanced head and neck carcinoma

Most cases of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) are in the advanced stages, resulting in a poor prognosis. To improve the poor outcome, adjuvant chemotherapy is indispensable for advanced cases with a high relapse risk after standard definitive treatments including surgery and/or radiotherapy. To define an adequate administration schedule in adjuvant chemotherapy with S-1, a controlled randomized study in multi-institutes was done. The results showed the 2-week administration followed by 1-week rest was superior to the 4-week administration followed by the 2-week rest in terms of safety and efficacy. In the present paper, some problems of adjuvant chemotherapy were discussed, and the protocol was described in terms of a multi-institutional controlled randomized comparison study of S-1 versus UFT in an adjuvant chemotherapy setting for locally advanced HNSCC.