TUESDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) -- In patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma, treatment with sorafenib after one or two standard transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) procedures does not significantly increase time to cancer progression or recurrence, according to research presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, held from Jan. 22 to 24 in Orlando, Fla.
Kiwamu Okita, M.D., of Shimonoseki Kohsei Hospital in Japan, and colleagues randomly assigned 458 patients from Japan and Korea to receive either 400 mg of sorafenib or placebo twice daily.
The researchers' central review found that median time to progression/recurrence was not significantly different between the sorafenib and placebo groups (5.4 versus 3.7 months). It also found no significant group differences in overall survival (hazard ratio, 1.06). However, several exploratory secondary analyses suggested that sorafenib may be beneficial, with one analysis showing a median time to progression/recurrence of 7.2 months in the sorafenib group compared to 5.3 months in the placebo group.
"Time to progression/recurrence by central review was not significantly prolonged in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma treated with sorafenib after TACE, potentially because of the greater rate of discontinuations and/or the shorter duration of treatment," the authors conclude.
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