Regional and systemic palliative chemotherapy in metastatic colorectal cancer: Results and quality of life

In a retrospective analysis we compared diverse application modalitites of palliative chemotherapy in the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer. We found that regional chemotherapy is associated with higher response rates compared to systemic treatment (63% vs. 31%). The antitumoral efficacy of protracted infusion therapy was better in both the regional and the systemic arm than that of short-term infusional therapy. The number of toxic side effects was higher in the regional treatment arm compared to the systemic arm (56% vs. 45%), and in the protracted compared to the short-term infusional arm (67% vs. 53%). Thus patients reported a poorer quality of life when treated with either regional or long-term infusional chemotherapy.