A Study Comparing Chemotherapy Dosing Based on Either Standard Body Surface Area or Lean Body Mass in Patients With Advanced Lung Cancer

Retrospective findings of NSCLC patients treated with a cisplatin based chemotherapy regimen show that although all were given cisplatin at the standard rate of 75 mg/m2 according to lean body mass, when this was expressed in relation to individual lean body mass, there was a high degree of variation. Incidence of dose limiting toxicity was 41% in patients whose dose was within + 25% of the median value. However, sarcopenic patients received on average a 35% higher dose and 80% of these patients experienced severe toxicity requiring dose reduction or termination of therapy, a clinically unacceptable level. The relatively muscular subset of patients with higher lean body mass had a reduced level of severe toxicity compared to those at the median dose. These findings have led to the design of a study with the goal of reducing high levels of toxicity in sarcopenic patients. If the expected level of dose limiting toxicity in sarcopenic patients is 80% based on the standard method of dosing, this could be expected to be reduced to the median value of 41% dose limiting toxicity by the administration of cisplatin scaled to individual lean body mass. Hypothesis: Levels of severe toxicity in sarcopenic patients may be reduced to clinically acceptable levels by cisplatin dosing scaled to 3.1 mg/kg lean body mass compared with standard dosing of 75 mg/m2 based on body surface area.