Combination chemotherapy with S-1 and carboplatin for head and neck cancers

Chemotherapy plays an important role in the treatment of head and neck cancer (HNC) patients with recurrent and/or metastatic unresectable disease. The standard regimen for HNC has been a combination of cisplatin (CDDP) and 5-fluorouracil (5-FU). We planned to develop a new outpatient regimen that could be carried out safely and had an antitumor activity equivalent to the regimen of CDDP plus 5-FU. For this purpose, we selected a combination of S-1 and carboplatin. The overall response rate of 40.9% in this study was almost equivalent to the study previously reported on 5-FU plus CDDP. This regimen of S-1 plus carboplatin has the possibility of yielding tumor responses equivalent to a conventional regimen of 5-FU combined with CDDP in patients with recurrent and/or metastatic head and neck carcinoma as a second-line palliative chemotherapy.