Abstract
Purpose: Chemotherapy with docetaxel in hormone resistant prostate cancer improves overall survival (OS); we evaluated patients of a general public hospital in São Paulo, SP, Brazil, treated with docetaxel as first line chemotherapy and afterwards with second line chemotherapy based on mitoxantrone.
Objectives: To identify the benefits of chemotherapy in first and second line treatments.
Materials and Methods: We reviewed the records for 49 patients who received chemotherapy in the setting of disease progression despite castration. We evaluated progression-free survival (PFS) and OS according, reasons for stopping treatment, and pain control.
Results: Among 49 patients, who received chemotherapy with docetaxel, the median PFS was 7 months and OS was 15 months. Only 10 patients received second line chemotherapy and 8 of them received mitoxantrone. It was not possible to evaluate OS or PFS for those patients, although 50% of them seemed to have benefitted in controlling their pain.
Conclusion: In our hands Docetaxel as the first line chemotherapy option for patients with castrate resistant prostate cancer produced OS results similar to the literature. Without the use of new drugs that are not available in our public sector, the benefits of second line chemotherapy are uncertain.