Survival of Patients With Advanced Colorectal Cancer Improves With the Availability of Fluorouracil-Leucovorin, Irinotecan, and Oxaliplatin in the Course of Treatment

We analyzed data from seven recently published phase III trials in advanced CRC to correlate the percentage of patients receiving second-line therapy and the percentage of patients receiving all three agents with the reported median OS, using a weighted analysis.

The reported median OS is significantly correlated with the percentage of patients who received all three drugs in the course of their disease (P =.0008) but not with the percentage of patients who received any second-line therapy (P =.19). In addition, the use of combination protocols as first-line therapy was associated with a significant improvement in median survival of 3.5 months (95% CI, 1.27 to 5.73 months; P =.0083).