Effectiveness of maintenance therapy after the end of the first line of treatment for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer - the results of a population-based study

Aim. To evaluate the effectiveness of different regimens of maintenance chemotherapy after the first line of treatment for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer. Materials and methods. We performed retrospective analyses of the data from 432 patients from 17 clinics in 14 regions of the Russian Federation who started systemic therapy for metastatic cancer in 2013. The main inclusion criterion was objective response or stabilization after the first 16 weeks of first-line therapy. Four groups of patients were compared, depending on the nature of maintenance therapy: those receiving fluoropyrimidines, a combination of fluoropyrimidines with bevacizumab, monotherapy of bevacizumab and monotherapy of anti-EGFR antibodies. The main criteria for assesment of the effectiveness of treatment were progression-free survival and overall survival. The statistical analysis was performed with the SPSS 20.0 software package. Results. Maintenance therapy after completion of the first 16 weeks of the 1st line of chemotherapy was administered in 126 patients, most of them were treated with fluoropyrimidines (53...