Aim: We aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of apatinib treatment and its impact on the quality of life (QOL) of patients with advanced gastric cancer (GC) who experienced failure with at least two chemotherapeutic regimens.
Materials and methods: All patients received apatinib at a daily dose of 500 mg for 4 weeks per cycle until it was stopped due to disease progression, intolerable toxicity. Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors version 1.1 and Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse events 4.0 were used to assess tumor responses and toxicities, respectively. The European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer QLQ-C30 and QLQ-STO22 were used to assess the impact on patient's QOL.
Results: Twenty-five patients were enrolled, but only 24 were evaluated for therapeutic effects. After apatinib treatment, none of the patients achieved complete response (CR), one achieved partial response (PR), and eight had stable disease (SD), resulting in a disease control rate of 37.5% (CR + PR + SD). Responses to questions regarding abdominal pain, nausea/vomiting, insomnia, constipation, and diarrhea in QLQ-C30 and abdominal pain and reflux in QLQ-STO22 were changed over the course of treatment (P < 0.05). The QOL score was elevated after three treatment cycles, but it was not considered statistically significant (P > 0.05).
Conclusion: Results indicated that apatinib was effective in heavily pretreated patients with advanced GC who experienced failure with two or more line chemotherapies. The toxicities were tolerable or could be clinically controlled. Apatinib treatment alleviated some of the clinical symptoms but did not improve QOL significantly.
Keywords: Apatinib; gastric cancer; quality of life; vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-2.